


We Could Be Heroes

by shadow_in_the_shade



Category: Thor - All Media Types
Genre: 1970's AU, Hate Sex, M/M, all the sex, glam rock loki, not so hate sex, rock star thor, velvet goldmine au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-03-05 00:15:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 27,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3097865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadow_in_the_shade/pseuds/shadow_in_the_shade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rock Star Thor/ Glam Rock Loki AU!</p><p>It's the 1970's and a mistake in management sees Thor Odinson's failing heavy rock band "Terminal Deafness" paired up with glam -goth -rock - experimental - Scandinavian group "Illusion's Destiny" in one of the greatest mis-matches of the glam rock age. Chaos ensues.</p><p>Needless the ill paired rock stars hate each other. Hate hate hate. That's all it is. Yes. Absolutely.</p><p>Cue all the sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Prettypearlnecklace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prettypearlnecklace/gifts).



**We could be heroes.**

It was late, it was cold, it was dark and it was wet, the tour was not going well and Thor Odinson was beyond pissed off. They had lost two drummers now since the start, back in London three months ago, and god that seemed like a far off dream now, playing some crappy bar in the north of England, getting rained on all the way back to the hotel.

Thor wasn’t even sure which point he wanted to rage about more vitally – crappy bar, north of England or mother-fucking rain. Again. They were supposed to be playing stadiums. They _had_ been playing fucking stadiums before _Flight Rising_ bailed on them. _Fuck it,_ Fandral had said, they didn’t need _Flight Rising,_ they should be headlining as it was, not playing runner up for some shitty old school metal band.

 _Headlining my ass,_ Thor thought, wondering how quickly he could get a new agent if he fired Fandral’s useless, pansy, satin clad behind. The only places they were getting to headline were sad act pubs where some creepy old local man with facial hair in all the wrong places glared at them and left when they started playing.

 _Fuck this,_ Thor thought for the hundredth time that day. There was water in his boots as he pulled them off and the bottoms of his jeans slapped his legs like angry wet fish. Fuck the rain, it seemed to follow him everywhere; as though it knew when he was pissy and wanted to wind him up. Fuck the shitty pubs, fuck Fandral, fuck Carlisle for all it was worth and right now especially, fuck useless-ass drummers who kept succumbing to deadly bouts of spinal tap disease.

He stomped across the room, such as it was, and when he planted a foot right in the centre of a wet pile of clothes he roared inside and wondered if the day could get any worse. At which point he spotted the flyer beside the shit-as-fuck bed. He was on the phone in seconds, bellowing Fandral to get to his room this fucking second. He was still bellowing when Fandral walked in the door.

“Thor?” he asked, with that ingratiating politeness that made Thor want to hit him.

“Don’t _Thor_ me you obsequious ass! The fuck is this?”

“The fuck is what?”

“ _This_ you buffoon, this! _Terminal Deafness and Illusion’s Destiny –_ who _the fuck_ are Illusion’s Destiny?”

“Thor, it’s good news, I was going to tell you – they’re our new supporting act.”

“Well I’ve never fucking heard of them.”

“They’re Scandinavian, but they’ve been touring the states. Apparently they’re enormous in Denmark.”

“Denmark?” Thor’s voice was dangerously calm and Fandral missed the warning, smiling and nodding- to Thor’s mind like a cataleptic monkey.

“Fandral, I don’t give a fuck about fucking Denmark. _I’ve_ never heard of them, their name is whack and – is this them?” Thor picked up a solo flyer from under the first – “They look fucking gay.”

“Thor. _You’re_ gay. I hardly think that’s relevant.”

“I hardly think _you’re_ relevant and yet I still pay you – to do what exactly? Pitch us together with some faggy Danish goth band? We’ll be the laughing stock of whatever one man and his goat you can get to come and watch us.”

“Seriously Thor, at least give them a chance, they’re on their way here as we speak, nobody else would agree to step in at the last minute and frankly, anything has to be better than tonight right? Also what is it with you and goats?”

“I wanna go home.”

“It’s raining just as hard in London.”

Thor groaned, threw himself heavily onto the bed, which protested epically at this treatment, and scrubbed his face with the palm of his hand.

“They’ll be here tomorrow in time for a proper gig in three days time at The Sand’s Centre, we’ve sold seats and everything.”

It was hardly the arena Thor felt sure he had been promised, but a theatre was at least a step up from a pub. Thor sighed so heavily he thought he might blow down the crappy hotel walls. Outside the wind was helping in the same endeavour.

“Fine,” he groaned.

“Yeah?”

“Fine. I’ll meet your lame-ass pile of wank band. But don’t go making too many plans. And don’t expect me to dress like them, they look like a pile of poofs with too much eye make up.”

-x-

“Thor, no.”

“ _Please_ Sif.”

“Thor, I’m a bassist not a drummer.”

“But you _know_ drums. I got a guy can replace you on the bass, I can’t get a new drummer for shit.”

“Yeah, you know why? Cause the life expectancy of a drummer in a rock band is like a lemming with itchy feet on a cliff top. Thor don’t make me be drummer.”

Thor pleaded, Sif groaned. Thor begged, Sif was just stomping off saying that she’d do it but they’d all regret it when there was a crash and a high, supercilious voice drawling –

“No not _there_ you imbeciles – _there._ Ugh, how does anyone work in this mess.”

Thor glared at the newcomers, who were hauling their instruments right into and all but on

top of theirs, located the speaker, a figure of indeterminate gender in a shiny sweeping lavender coat and unceremoniously crossed the room in several loud stomps;

 

“Hey – this is _our_ rehearsal space – who the hell are you?”

 

“Thor Odinson?” The speaker finally turned, smiling with utmost insincerity, the most dazzling, nastiest smile Thor had ever seen – “ _Illusion’s Destiny – such_ a pleasure to make your acquaintance, I’m Loki.”

 

A slight sneer crept into the young man’s face, his eyes doing a quick once over of Thor as he said this, a once over that left it perfectly clear he had been measured and found wanting in the space of a few seconds. Thor did not take the hand that, to his mind, was pretentiously offered, taking the stranger in instead with eyes that could not have been half as scathing for all the world.

 

Loki Laufeyson of _Illusion’s Destiny_ was everything Thor had feared he would be; and worse, he was undeniably beautiful for all of that. Silver lips, violet swirls around the eyes and that faux fur lined coat that swept and circled just shy of brushing the ground. His smile dazzled and lied without his even needing to speak and his eyes seemed to reflect every colour they landed on, silver and violet with a watery wash of green underneath. He balanced like a dancer in knee-high heeled boots and the silver nails dripped with tiny rhinestones.

 

All in all, he was the most horrendous and affected person Thor had ever seen. He hated him on sight. He suspected in fact, in those moments, that they were both basking in a deep mutual loathing, so intense he was almost enjoying it.

 

“Of course you are,” he sighed – “And I thought my day could get no worse.”

 

This was not going to go well.

 

__x__

 

**Happy new year people, I seem to be back with a shiny new AU, this one’s dedicated to _prettypearlnecklace,_ happy birthday my dear! :-)**

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**2.**

 

Loki was the most beautiful nightmare Thor had ever had the misfortune to work with. And he _was_ beautiful; Thor wished it was easier to deny or ignore. With or without the make-up and the costumes – and apparently nobody ever saw him without even in rehearsals – he was the most captivating creature anyone had ever seen. Sequin and sparkle, feather and fur, he seemed always as though some gorgeous alien or animal creature had landed in their midst and could find nothing better to do with mankind than annoy it.

Loki sashayed through life as though it were all one big photo shoot. As though it were a music video. Even when he was lounging it was a pose. Every innocuous statement sounded affected and the affected statements sounded like they had been rehearsed well in advance. Nothing passed those perfectly curved and made up lips that did not sound perfect. Not a word dropped that sounded even slightly sincere. Any hint of what was genuine died within two metres of him.

And those lips, bruise-purple dusted with gold, black and sequined with stars, emerald green and lightning silver. They smirked and taunted , sneered and squirmed. Reflective eyes caught the shades that painted them, dazzling lightning bolts of make-up streaking one cheek, swirls and flourishes of black sweeping out from the eyes in points and curls, hints of gems in the corners of the eyes and on one occasion paper butterflies. Every feature of his face, it seemed, had to be a work of art.

_Loki_ was a work of art. A walking, pretentiously talking one, and he knew it. His clothes were glorious; high heels, platforms, boots in every shade of kingfisher, marine, sunset and shadow, jeans so tight they looked as though they had been painted onto him. The first time Thor wondered how he ever undressed he found himself going furiously red, could feel the heat in his own face at just imagining it and could not imagine where that feeling had come from.

He never wore anything twice, with the exception of the emerald and swirling green pin that could always be found somewhere in his attire. Thor suspected that to a mind like that it would have been a positive sin to repeat an outfit. He was disgustingly trivial, and Thor had already told him so within the first day of attempting to share a rehearsal space. Loki had laughed affectedly as though this was a terrible compliment and replied –

“Darling, triviality is the only thing in this world worth taking seriously. We should always treat the trivial things seriously and the serious ones with sincere and studied triviality.”

He had smiled at himself proudly, half consciously looking around him as though waiting for the applause, but Thor had read the occasional Wilde too and merely grunted in disgust before walking off to join his band.

Everything he said seemed to irritate Thor. Everything, it seemed, that he could manage was a rehashed witticism of somebody else’s or a well-rehearsed one of his own. Even when Thor had, in frustration announced that it was impossible to have a normal conversation with him Loki had replied that the only conversations worth having were the ones it was hard to hold on to and that he should not desire anything as vulgar as normality even if one had the ill manners to offer it to him.

And then, in one unfortunate moment, Loki had overheard Thor screaming at Fandral, not for the first time –

“I just can’t work with this utter cunt!”

He had turned around and Loki had just been standing there, having appeared as he often did, unexpected and silent as a shadow. He had simply slouched, ever so elegantly, back against the wall, raised a crystal glass – one Thor suspected he carried around with him as a bloody prop for such occasions- and smiled insinuatingly.

“I’m not entirely certain _cunt_ is anything _you_ would wish to work with anyway,” he had purred archly, raised an eyebrow, tightened his smirk and stalked out slowly and with infinite superiority.

And all this was before the issues of music between the two bands even arose.

They did arise, and fast. After an altercation that had almost resulted in a punch up between drummers, it had been agreed that first morning that _Terminal Deafness_ could take first rehearsal. In the lull after playing out two songs Thor had looked up to see the place deserted apart from his own band and Loki, damn the idiot , sat with his back to a pillar at the front of his own damn stage staring at him with a look of utter horror that made his eyes look huge and innocent and his perfect face angelically wronged.

“What?” Thor yelled, looming over him, not caring by now if it seemed threatening. Loki was not threatened; he looked up at the towering, angry, brick shit house of a  rock star with a look of perfect insolence and cocked his head to one side –

“So tell me –” he said, and Thor knew already that it was going to take all of his will power not to punch the little shit in the face no matter what came out of his pretty mouth next – “ _Terminal Deafness_ – who came up with that one? And is it something from which you all suffer or just the state your audience would like to be in when you’re done?”

Thor yelled incoherently and swiped to yank Loki up by his frilly shirt front. Loki dodged easily, jumping off the stage with feline grace and laughing at him from afar;

“Well play on, play on!” he mocked, executing a flourishing bow – “I’ll just be in the next room – seeking solace for my ears,” he added quickly and ran off.

When _Illusion’s Destiny_ reappeared half an hour later Thor stomped off the stage ungraciously to let them take their turn. He had been thrown by Loki and not had a good rehearsal and he grabbed him by the shirt this time as he headed up the stage –

“This better not suck, Laufeyson, or I’ll tear you a new one,” he growled.

“Ugh.” Loki rolled his eyes, unfazed at being manhandled by the larger man – “You’re an ill -mannered oaf. And will you _please_ give over with the shirt front? This is a one off retro –”

“I don’t give a fuck,” Thor grunted, letting go of him fast rather than to have to hear any deeper details about his thrice damned designer clothing.

Just to check, he stayed to hear what they sounded like. After the first song, Loki smirked over to him in the audience and raised an eyebrow. Thor grimaced back;

“I think –” he grunted – “I’m going to be sick.”

Loki smiled as though he was utterly delighted by this, made a tiny bow in Thor’s direction and slipped into the next song. They were the kind of songs that slid and slipped and segued. Despite his comment Thor was not _certain_ that he hated it, but he convinced himself he did because he hated Loki. He _really_ hated Loki. He thought about how much as he watched him on the stage. When Loki was on the stage it was impossible to look anywhere else. He feared he himself had nothing like that charisma and hated him all the more for it. The music transported him from the alien amongst men way up into the clouds of a night sky where the audience could not help but feel they were looking up at this splendid being from above, glittering, bird like, reptilian and angelic all at once. His voice was otherworldly, ethereal, beckoning you in to swim with the music.

Loki was captivating and Thor hated it.

-x-

They played Carlisle three nights and by the second Thor was obsessing beyond what he had ever expected, over how much he hated Loki.

To his great distress the first night had gone down well.

“It was all us you fellas,” Thor heard Loki laughing to his band as they sauntered into the bar afterwards – “Us heathens bringing these reprobates a little bit of class.” Thor heard the band laugh at his band’s expense and had grabbed Loki by the lapel this time, almost scratching his hand on the sequins. Loki was scaled that night, like a lizard, his gorgeous suit green in some lights, purple in others, all with a hint, a glimmer of gold dust that shimmered over his face and flicked out from his hair every time he moved his head.

“Ye-es?” Loki drawled politely. Thor had been certain this time he was really going to punch him and in the face of the overly cultured question did not know quite what to do. He let go of him roughly in disgust and started to turn away when Loki’s ringing voice laughed out –

“Sweetie, if you’d wanted to touch me you could have just asked.”

He whipped around; this time he _was_ going to punch him. Luckily Fandral for once seized a timely moment and jumped between them pronouncing –

“Good news! When we finish our run here I’ve secured us five nights playing the Newcastle Arena. It’s a big one guys, you’re doing great!”

He looked from Thor to Loki and back again, as though having only just clocked the situation he had walked into, groaned and turned away from them.

“Fuck my life,” Thor grunted and Loki smiled at him beamingly –

“Oh my,” he breathed – “Won’t this be fun.”

__x__

**By the way if I’m rude about Carlisle I’m allowed cause it’s where I live :-P It’s affectionate anyway, I love Carlisle. Just this one time, for a few chapters I thought it would be cute to see Thor and Loki in my home town, don’t get a  lot of chances for that! :-)**

**Sex will come, if not next chapter than the one after. :-)**


	3. Chapter 3

 

“I don’t get it,” Thor frowned.

“No, of course you don’t,” Loki sighed, as though this was only to be expected.

It was their second night playing Newcastle, and despite trying really hard not to, Thor could no longer ignore the fact that _Illusion’s Destiny_ were going down a lot more enthusiastically with the crowds than they were. It was all wrong; they were only supposed to be supporting and yet he felt like when _Terminal Deafness_ took the stage the audience were disappointed, wanting more, always more of Loki Laufeyson and the pretentious-wank-band. It had _not_ gone down well on the first night when Loki had heard Thor calling them this, but he had, as was his irritating custom, covered up his anger with a more than usually wide grin and the sweetest lilt in his voice when he swept by declaring –

“At least some of us have something to be pretentious about.”

It did not help that he could see _why_ people liked them. It would have been better if he had just thought they were terrible and could not understand. But Loki drew every eye in the room as soon as he was in it. It was partly the costumes, partly the stage tricks; but a lot of it was simply Loki.

“Darling I _am_ the costume,” he said, when Thor had pointed out that people were probably so dazzled by the look of the thing they did not care about the person or the substance – “This is where you have it so wrong. It’s not a disguise. It’s who I am. But you make it look like a disguise so that nobody will ever work you out.” He whispered it, winking at Thor as though imparting a great secret. Thor grunted.

“Who’d you steal that bit of wisdom from?”

“Oh no –” Loki shook his head “That’s pure original me, baby.”

“Original bull shit. _Who_ are you then? I’ve seen the act, you start off looking like some – shiny gay alien and end up like – what is that – a fish? And call me baby again and I _will_ punch you.”

“Look,” Loki said patiently, as though explaining it to a child – “The act is not only an act. If it was nobody would fall for it. That’s how you lie. That’s how you tell a story. That’s what we do, isn’t it? Formulate beautiful musical lies, get the audience to believe you _are_ the alien, you _are_ the fish. But you have to believe it yourself or they never will.”

“And so – what – you’re a fish alien?”

Loki rolled his eyes. It was at this point that Thor announced he didn’t get it.

“Of course you don’t,” Loki sighed – “Okay. Listen –” he leaned in across the table in the hotel bar, grimaced, realised it was slightly sticky and lifted his sleeves off it with precious disgust – “The act tells a story. Each song is a chapter in the story –”

“So?” Thor leaned in, not giving a crap about the beer stains – “Tell me the story.”

“Do you want me to rock you to sleep when I’m done?”

“Shut up Loki.”

“Fine. In the beginning –” Loki closed his eyes. Treating Thor to the full view of his perfect kingfisher blue eye shadow with a silver streak like a fish in the centre, he nodded, opened them again, his voice had dropped to the sonorous hum of the storyteller. Thor didn’t want to be hooked, but he was despite himself, Loki dazzled the eye in the tight silver fish scale suit like sunlight on the water and his voice was the murmur of a stream - “The alien is a trickster from another planet, he comes down to earth and doesn’t know his place; nobody understands him, he doesn’t understand himself. That’s the first song.”

Thor could picture it; on stage Loki began in green and gold, appearing in a beam of light cutting across the stage, sparks of light danced from his hands from something he could only assume he had hidden up a sleeve, a great cloak of green swirled around him and behind him, dancing in a play of lights in the same colour until you did not know what was light and what was cloak.

“He tricks them. He captivates them. He helps them, over and over again, every time a trick goes well they’re in awe, yes, but they also take it as their due. Then when a plot goes wrong they turn on him and blame him, every time. He doesn’t care, dances on to the next game. Even when the gods intervene he does not care for them either. Same story, he helps them, bends them, tricks them again. We’ve got a lot of songs to cover various instances but not enough space in the act for all of them yet.”

“But why the fish?”

“I’m _getting_ to that! The trickster is a shape shifter; you see it in the costume changes throughout the act. He’s a horse, a bird, a woman. In the end he upsets everyone so much he takes the form of a fish to escape their wrath.”

“And does he? Escape?”

“Of course not,” Loki grinned – “That’s what the last song _Venom_ is all about. We’ve got this whole big set up planned for it – but right now I can’t work out the costume change – hence the fish –”

He gestured at the last outfit- that he was still wearing despite the act being long over.

“I do like it though –” he smiled, almost sweetly, stroking his own shoulder – “It’s so – _shiny.”_

Thor sighed.

“You can’t just get on stage and sing songs like a normal person?” Loki just looked at him with the most glittering condescension, that made Thor feel uncomfortably as though Loki could see right through him and knew that he was only saying this because he didn’t want to admit to any jealousy of the thought Loki had put into his work.

“I really hate you Loki.” Thor got up on that note and went over to the bar, Loki watching him intently and whispering behind his back –

“Do you now?” He grinned to himself; if anyone was really the fish here it was Thor and it was ridiculous how easy such a catch was proving to reel in. He was not even faintly surprised when Thor returned to their table, all the while making an incredibly terrible show of looking around to see that there was nobody else available to join.

“So why are you here?” Thor asked – “If you’re so much better than us, why agree to it?”

“Look, I didn’t want this any more than you did. But as it is our supporting band abandoned us too and we’re strangers in a strange country here. It was either this or some crappy bar in Soho where the only patrons are a couple of scary old queens in a corner babbling away in Polari and eyeing me up like I’m their next meal.”

“You speak Polari?”

“Ah naff off you omi palone, I look blue to you?” Loki raised his eyebrows with a grin.

“Kinda,” Thor smirked back, then looked away awkward that this might have been perceived as flirting when in fact it – might have been;

“So – what did he do?”

“What did who do?”

“Your trickster. How’d he piss everyone off so much they wanted to kill him? He annoy them half to death being a pretentious little shit?”

“Oh, you wound me,” Loki clasped his chest dramatically – “But yes, in a way; well first he brought about the death of their most beloved hero but then –”

“Oh there’s worse than that?”

“Oh yes –” Loki’s grin was almost threatening – “Then he made them all take a good look at themselves.”

“Doesn’t sound so bad.”

“Try it. You’d be wanting to kill me too.”

“What do you mean – would be?”

“I dislike you, Odinson.”

“Finally –” Thor nodded, although it was about the friendliest they had been – “Something we agree on.”

__x__

**Quick fyi: for anyone not familiar, Polari is/ was a form of British slang used by actors, criminals and all manner of underworld show folk, popular in the in the gay subculture of the 1970s, essentially it was used as a non – incriminating way of finding out if the person you were talking to was gay. Essentially Loki told Thor to “Fuck off you big lady-boy, do I look gay to you?” In other words making it clear that he was. :-)**

**And yes, Loki’s act is a combination of Norse mythology and Ziggy Stardust. :-)**


	4. Chapter 4

**4.**

 

It was the last night of the tour; a tour that had gone fantastically well but, as far as Thor was concerned, for all the wrong reasons. Loki, _Destiny’s Illusion,_ the increasingly fervent fan base that seemed to be growing for them both and above it all was Loki, always Loki. The more popular they became the more obnoxious he seemed to grow, and if someone had said this to Thor when he first set eyes on the irksome bastard he would have laughed and said that was impossible.

It was over now, they were back in London, and Loki would be gone in the morning. For all of this he should have been happy, relieved; he should have been overwhelmed with fucking ecstasy. But he wasn’t. He could not even begin to put his finger on why, but he was not happy at all.

They were celebrating – supposed to be celebrating – in a private bar they had hired for the event, on top of a roof, a beer garden looking down on the cars and the lights below shimmering like stars in a sky seen from the wrong way round. All around him the two bands were raucous with celebration, hanging out and laughing, all grudges temporarily forgotten, even Sif laughing with the other band’s drummer as though they had not frequently had to be prised apart from coming to blows the whole way through the tour. He knew his voice should have been the loudest in the throng. He should have been among them, not slouching in the corner by the wall, brooding over- what- he did not even know.

“Cheer up Odinson!” came the last voice he wanted to hear close to his ear – “You’ll have got rid of us soon enough. Lighten up – have a drink!” He looked up from the ground at which he had been adamantly glaring, right into Loki’s grinning – and, in the low light and starlight, suddenly breath-taking face.

“I’ll lighten up tomorrow,” he grouched back, swallowing heavily.

“Too bad I won’t be around to see it.”

“If you were, trust me I wouldn’t.”

“Oh Thor,” Loki sighed, light and affectionate as though they were friends – “Why do you have to always be so mean?”

“Go away Loki,” he scowled, wondering himself. This wasn’t like him. Not at all. He didn’t know where it came from, he _didn’t_ – he told himself so often and emphatically enough. Loki looked at him curiously, like a cat deciding how much longer it should toy with its prey;

“You know what I think it is?” he drawled, inching a little closer, and he was already more in Thor’s space than he was even faintly happy with. When Thor just grunted, Loki went on regardless, of course;

“ _I_ think –” he purred, in the smug way of someone who thinks that because they think it, it has to be true – “You just don’t like knowing that we were better than you. That _is_ it – isn’t it?”

“It is not.” Thor gritted out – “And you are _not_ better than us.”

“Oh please –” people were starting to look at them now, worried looks from both bands, and it was obviously under these circumstances that Loki, rather than follow up with a well- timed insult or scathing witticism went straight into the kill with an unexpectedly crude – “You’re shit and you know you are.”

There was the sound of a couple of dozen people not quite gasping and Sif closing her eyes in a face palm without the gesture.

“You little –” it was as far as Thor got before grabbing Loki by his soft and feathered collar and hurling him into the wall, holding him there with a rough pinch around the back of the neck as though holding a scratching angry cat. He was seconds from punching him – he told himself afterwards – when he saw the grin and the look of unmistakable satisfaction in the mocking green eyes. He trembled with rage, muscles straining in the arm that held Loki off the ground against the wall;

“Get out,” he spat. When nobody moved he roared it – “EVERYBODY GET OUT!”

There was the sound of reluctant shuffling as all the while Thor’s eyes burned into Loki’s.

On the way out Fandral whispered nervously to Sif – “Is this wise? They’re gonna kill each other.”

This time Sif really _did_ roll her eyes –

“Fandral –” she sighed – “You really are quite emphatically stupid.”

-x-

As soon as the roof was clear, Thor slammed his lips viciously into Loki’s. He dropped him enough for Loki to be on his feet but his fingers did not release any of their hold on his neck and Loki leaned up and into the kiss, pushing back as though it was a fight after all. It _was_ an attack, teeth and lips and hands, grasping, shoving and desperate; the first time he broke off for air he wished he had not, for Loki rolled his eyes and hissed a triumphant –

“ _Finally.”_

Instead of punching, Thor slapped him and Loki wound his arms around him like an aggressively growing vine, twisting into him as though Thor’s limbs were the tree around which he would grow.

“I hate you Loki,” Thor growled, pressing himself, hard and painful, against the perfect lithe form, crushing him into the wall;

“The fuck’s that got to do with anything?” Loki hissed back, clever hands under Thor’s shirt, nails ripping down his back like the claws of some small feral animal. The pain was divine and Thor responded in kind, hands kneading and bruising, dragging Loki’s shirt off to see the red marks and bruises spread across the perfect pale skin. Loki hissed as Thor bent to lick and bite at his neck; he had been starving for this and he should have known it. Thor muttered a curse as his shaking fingers tried to work at Loki’s belt buckle; it was silver and complex, twisted like a snake;

“Impatient oaf,” Loki muttered, but he helped and had almost turned round, pressed his own face into the wall before Thor could shove him there; he wrapped a hand around his cock before he became too trapped to move, wriggled the other into his pocket to hand Thor the small bottle of lube he had kept there. Thor growled in irritation at Loki’s forethought, irritated that he had known this would happen, but more than that relieved that he would not have to struggle; his erection was huge and hurting and he rubbed the oil in with a grunt, cursing in pleasure as he finally shoved in. Loki’s cries were muffled in the wall and his eyes leaked but he pushed back, needy and wanting;

“Now who’s impatient?” Thor murmured in his ear; he would have made him wait but he couldn’t, just thrust in hard and fast, pressing his whole body in to feel the sweet softness of Loki’s skin against him as he did; he had not known he would want _that_ so much, or that he would nuzzle his shoulder and the unbearably sweet curve of his neck. His eyes closed in bliss when he came, but Loki’s rolled upwards so that when he came shortly after it was staring up at the stars.

Thor pulled away abruptly; not entirely sure what he was going to do, he found himself frowning. He had not thought he would miss the contact. He thought he would feel some sense of finality. He did not. Loki turned, smiled, decided for him, with a small hand curling as far as it could around Thor’s wrist and pulling him down beside him as he slid down against the wall, pulling him against him, almost over him as though he were sleepy and Thor was a blanket.

Thor’s mind formed a bewildered, gasping _oh_ – and it felt as though he had been kicked in the chest by a horse; he looked at Loki and those eyes seemed to pull him in. When he found himself, within minutes, needing him again, this time he had to make it with Loki on his back, looking down into that beautiful, intriguing face, stroking him more gently than he had ever wanted.

The whole night they stayed there, on and under a pile of coats and clothes, leather and sequins, fur and steel. Loki’s kisses left Thor breathless and Loki in turn became breathless at his touch. Every time it felt like the whole world had changed they looked up to see the stars remaining the same, the cool of the wind on their heated faces whispering a promise to tantalise and terrify.

Thor never remembered falling asleep but when he woke up it was with Loki’s head pressed into the crook of his arm and the rest of him, curled up like a cat trying to fit his whole self against his chest. He smiled up at Thor with streaked eyeliner and glitter on his cheeks and Thor felt a moment of sharp stabbing pain, knowing himself and almost knowing Loki and knowing how this was going to go, wishing they could both be different.

He kissed him in the red light creeping over the lip of the roof, kissed him until Loki took his early morning need in hand, swinging up onto him and riding like he was a horse into the breaking dawn. Thor held his hips and barely needed to move, simply stared up into his face, his outline almost a shadow against the sunrise, _beautiful shadow –_ he thought – _how will I know who I am if turn and do not see you there?_

But when it was over the morning was a grey one, the sun weak and the rain starting to fall. There were dull rainbows watery on their hands when Loki turned away and barely said goodbye and he, wanting nothing else in the world than to do otherwise, turned away too, backing away from an intensity of feeling too much for him to handle.

It was not until later, as he shrugged his jacket on with a heavy sigh, that he noticed the green gem pinned to the lapel, glinting up at him and laughing like a strange green star with a secret hidden closely inside.

__x__

 

 

**Don’t cry! Nobody cry! This is obviously not the end! Heaps more to go from here. :-)**

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

 

The seventies had crashed into the eighties in an explosion of music and sequins. _Terminal Deafness_ had run with the era, crashing through walls of noise and sound and expectation and coming out dirtier, tighter and with the new name of _Hammerthrow_ that seemed to be working for them better. Thor Odinson was the rock star of the era, adorning many a teenager’s bedroom in leather pants and dripping oil, glaring moodily out from every pose with those bright blue eyes all the fans agreed should not be as dark and brooding as they were.

It seemed that Thor’s appeal had come to largely reside in an air of sadness and loss. He read it over and over again in the reviews and commentaries. His fucking _Rolling Stone_ Interview had asked “What is the Thunder god of Rock missing? What tragedy hides in those eyes? Whatever it is it has fuelled the bands shrieking rush to the stars, and we can only hope to see more of it.”

_Great,_ he thought, _every fucker out there wants a piece of my tragedy. What fucking tragedy?_ He looked in the mirror longer every day than a man ought, peering closely for a hint to his own trauma, convinced he had no idea. He was so convinced that in truth he _had_ no idea, no idea of what he had lost or any conception that there had ever been anything to lose.

When he took to drinking somewhat heavily in the face of all this bullshit, his adoring fans just took it as another great move on the part of their hero. Further evidence that Thor Odinson was growing into the perfect star.

And now then a story could be glimpsed behind the words of his songs. Even though he growled and argued with anyone who came to him with interpretations and suggestions as to the meanings of his words there was a coherent theme that could not be denied. Only those who knew him knew better than to ask. The one time Fandral had come to him asking if they could cut his song _Silver Tongue_ out of the night’s set, he had gone away afraid that the rock star was actually going to kill him. As it was he had downed half a bottle of Jack in one and then thrown the bottle at the wall near his head.

“We don’t cut out _Silver Tongue._ Ever,” was all he had said and in tones of utter finality – “Anything else you would like us to cut?” he had added, dangerously. Fandral had squeaked out a row of negatives and exited fast, relieved he had not also suggested _Green Eyes_ as well, as he had previously been considering.

He did not answer questions about the identity of the girl in _Green Eyes_. Or _Wildfire._ Or _Lie to me._ Once some smart arse fan had actually asked him if they were all the same person and he had answered his standard which was no answer at all.

But he was fine. He was good. Fucking good. Didn’t give a crap about the bullshit. Thor Odinson was _loving_ his success, loving fame, loving being in the spotlight. When nobody asked anything too awkward it was agreed that he was the number one person in the country to have at your party. _Everybody_ wanted to hang with him and he was a great guy to hang with. The whole rocking world knew that. Only –

Only you never saw a man get moody so fast. You never saw anybody go from being the shining sun in the centre of the room to falling in on themselves like a black hole. It could happen without warning, just a change in the music could trigger it; there were songs that sent him imploding inwards, lost to the rest of the world.

Sif had noticed. She was the only one to have seen the pattern. It was not just any song that did it. It wasn’t a whim or the kind of chord that made a person cry. It was _Lokasenna._ It was only ever _Lokasenna._ She did not mention it to him ever, any more than she would have said that _she_ knew damn well all of his songs were about the same girl and it was no girl.

She had kept track of _Illusion’s Destiny_ just as she knew that Thor had when they returned to America, becoming _Loki’s Flyting_ and finally _Lokasenna._ She saw his face every time one of their songs came on and she wished every time that she had banged a couple of idiot heads together when she still had the chance.

Loki was completely and utterly adored over there. Well she had seen that coming if not the extent of it. His fans were _insane._ Young girls would reference him in suicide notes for suicides that never actually took place, young girls _and_ boys would camp out for days in wait for a ticket and then for days before a concert. He was sent death threats and marriage proposals daily. Young people would run at him naked in the street for a chance of his autograph across their chest, they would all but live outside a house they believed to be his and never was. Loki had become a master of subterfuge, putting out fake contact details and addresses every few weeks in the hope of putting off his more ardent fans. It worked for the most part, though he still had an unflushable array of persistent groupies every time he went on tour.

“You’ve no right getting jealous, you know,” Sif had said, the one time she had actually talked to Thor about this.

“I’m _not_ fucking jealous” he had growled.

“Oh spare me.” She rolled her eyes – “You may be able to put one over on the rest of the world but you’ll not work that on me”. She was sprawled on a sofa in the midst of party debris, streamers caught in the black fringe of her skirt – “Look around you, Thor. You have groupies of your own. You could have _anyone_ you damn well wanted and you know it. You can’t spend your whole life mourning the one that got away.”

“Watch me,” he had snarled, the closest to admitting anything he had ever come. She had watched him. She had watched his eyes slide back to the television playing in the background where the music video for _Bring on the thunder_ slid by in sickening silver detail as Loki itemised himself for all to see, pimped himself out in his glitter and satin, emerald framed eyes, black lips, silver pointed fingernails tracing along a wall. She watched him stare at it all furiously before she hauled herself up and flounced off in disgust. _Five years,_ she thought, _five fucking years._

And then, on the back of his ’83 Lightning Bolt tour a new burst of enthusiasm hit. All of a sudden a great meeting of the band and all involved therein was called and Fandral was asking him who he would most like to meet in America.

“This a trick?”

“No trick.” Fandral was grinning like this was all one hundred percent his own doing – “It’s time. We’re gonna hit America and _you_ –” pointing at Thor – “Get to do a promo with any American star of your choosing.”

The band whooped and yelled and chucked out suggestions. All except Sif; all the thought was _fuck_ and _Thor – don’t._ But he did.

“Loki Laufeyson,” he said, intent glittering golden in his eyes for the first time anyone had seen in five years – “I want Loki Laufeyson.”

__x__

**Well, my beta and beloved summed this up in the words “They’re such big stupid babies”. They are. Sorry about the lack of Loki in this chapter, but of course he will be with us again in the next! *Drum roll* :-)**


	6. Chapter 6

 

**6.**  

 

Thor remembered. He remembered how the sky had seemed to dance that night, looking up from the roof. It had seemed alive with fire, dancing tongues of red and green, colours in the sky, trailing a ladder to the stars. It had shone with rainbows as though the sky had opened up that night and let all its hidden secrets come falling through in a waterfall of colour.

It had not been that way, not in actual cold fact, but he remembered it so all the same.

He remembered. He lived in memory. That feeling as though the night had been encapsulated in a snow globe and all the stars like glitter around their figures on the roof. It hurt his head to shake that globe and see the glitter fall but he could not tear his eyes away from the sparkle. If it caught in his eye long enough he could see glimpses of that smile flickering at him out of the night like a trick that lured him in, fooled him completely and then tripped him up. He never wanted to follow where that smiled beckoned; it could reel him in, trapping him in that dark snow globe forever. It never occurred to him how trapped he already was.

He could sit for long moments some days; brooding, running the smooth green stone of the pin in his fingers. He wore it so often that there were fan theories as to what it meant. Actually, he wore it always; only sometimes he kept it hidden so that nobody would suspect him of any kind of strange obsession.

Even when he was not specifically brooding, he would stroke the shiny stone like glass, at all times and in all places his hand would seek the pin on his lapel and touch it again and again for a comfort it really did always seem to give him.

-x-

Loki’s hand went to his lapel. It often did when he did not stop himself in time; a nervous gesture that never consoled him anymore. He had always reached to stroke the green stone, _for luck_ he had told himself at first; but now he reached for it and finding it not there simply reminded him every time that he had lost something. Something more than the pin, though he refused to admit to _that._

It had a history, that pin, a long and Romantic one that he did not know the full of himself. He had been given it so long ago he could no longer remember who by. Somebody said it had once belonged to Oscar Wilde. Somebody else said it was alien in origin, part of a fallen star, the glint from a dead god’s eye. Some said they were all true, that the aliens had left it with Oscar Wilde when they left him behind on this planet as a child. They were all good stories; Loki worked them all, spinning them into his tales and the legends he constructed around himself. He constructed legends out of legends using parts of him in the mix. He constructed the stories into himself in return so it was impossible for anyone, even for him, to know where the stories ended and the man began. He would talk about this at length if you asked him, and the interviewers did.

The reviews. Oh the endless reviews. Some had told him fame would be a nightmare;

“I deal in nightmares,” he said, smiling that mischievous smile his fans screamed and wept over – “And in dreams. I couldn’t possibly make it clear to you which of the two I was now could I?”

Fame suited him like everything suited him. One fan had written that he could wear a bin bag and make it look beautiful. The next week he had done exactly that; transforming the suggested article into slick black plastic jeans and tattered strips that revealed most of his chest. He had done a photo shoot in the infamous Bin Bag outfit that had been the talk of fans and critics for months. Everywhere he looked he saw pictures of himself, gazing out from shiny front covers of magazines with charcoal black around the eyes, teeth shockingly white against black lipstick and the black nails resting against perfectly white airbrushed skin.

If he had been anyone else it might have made him uncomfortable but –

“Thank god I am who I am,” he had told the press, smugly – “I’d have been useless at being anyone else.”

The interviewer came back at him then for not using an original quote and stealing one from a popular television show.

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person,” he grinned – “Give him a mask and he’ll tell you the truth”. He grinned harder when the interviewer failed to point out that these too were not his own words and instead asked him who he thought should come out the winner at the end of said show. He spent the next few days manipulating images of himself as ruler of the seven kingdoms in question and sending them out to all the magazines that would take them.

There was nothing wrong in the whole of the life of Loki Laufeyson; one of the most successful musicians and personalities perhaps in the world these days. Everywhere he looked were posters of himself- he saw his own face grinning up from every surface. The world was simply a mirror in which he could admire his own beauty. And he did. There were no sleepless nights for him; you only had to look into those shimmering reflective eyes to see it.

Later, he would forget where he was when it all came tumbling down. He would remember what he was wearing and nothing else.

He was resplendent that day in black leather and silver steel, touches on the arms of his shirt to look like armour, shoulder plates in dangerous spikes and entirely aesthetic leather straps around his arms and chest. His boots were tight leather to the knee, edged with silver flame.

He would forget the place; perhaps it was a club of some kind; his band had booked some very exclusive room and you could hear the whole place awash with pretty lies and meaningless witticism flowing in little streams around the chink of crystal glass and the mystical sweet sound of his own voice blasting from the speakers welcoming you into a magical world from which you would struggle to return. It was as easy to enter Loki’s world as to slide into silken water and a difficult to get out as to wade through sticky treacle.

Suddenly someone tapped him rather hard on the shoulder and he turned around slowly, because he hurried for no-one, scowling a little because it was rather vulgar of them and smiling his most artificial smile at the same time. It dropped from his face before even he could dart and catch it.

“Thor,” it came out in almost a gasp of surprise.

“Loki”.

The warmth in the blue eyes was dreadful; cracking the ice of the chilly plastic reality with which he had surrounded himself. Obviously he had not spared a thought for Thor Odinson of – what was it - god yes _Terminal Deafness,_ not these five years gone. Not once. Never. This was just a ridiculous and unexpected blast from a well forgotten past, one of the many fleeting encounters made along the route to his current glorious position.

Loki was, for the first time in his life, speechless, hanging in the balance between warmth and chill without even the breath of a word on his lips.

__x__

 

**Seriously Loki is the unreliable narrator to end all unreliable narrators. Yes I have shamelessly stolen quotes and plot and Oscar Wilde’s pin from “Velvet Goldmine”. I didn’t actually mean for Loki to quote Jaime Lannister but he did. Then I remembered that he – Loki - is canonically a Game of Thrones fan and ran with it....only then I remembered that Game of Thrones wasn't around in the 1980's and changed that whole paragraph to make it work. Incidentally there are heaps of images out there of him on The Iron Throne if anyone just looks. :-)**


	7. Chapter 7

 

Loki blinked his surprise like an owl – _a stupid owl, ­_ his brain supplied, unhelpfully. He felt a surge of joy so strong that it simply enraged him and he pushed it down savagely. He back-pedalled away from this, sure so hard in the attempt to restore both image and ego that absolutely nothing came out of his mouth that was not at the very least one hundred percent arsehole.

He swallowed his smile, shoved one of the traitorous hands that had instinctively reached – to touch, to hug, he didn’t even know, it was awful – shoved it hard in his pocket and ran the other through his hair, going even so far as to forget that it was streaked with silver which then came off in his hands. He laughed shrilly, a high pitched grating sound that sounded horrible and false even to his own ears.

“It’s Thor, right? I’m bad with faces – and names actually, you’ll have to help me out here –”

The look on Thor’s face – as though he had been slapped, was an instant vindication, a painful little tug of victory that Loki could take no real joy in, just settled back comfortably into the pool of his own acid. He could smirk, with no real humour, more easily with his brain nipping at him cuttingly –

“No wait, it’s coming back to me – _Terminal Dumbness – Darkness –_ something like that – I forget.”

“Deafness,” Thor heard his voice as though from far away, coming up out of a floor that falling out from under him.”

“Christ, yeah, that was it – nowI _wish_ I had forgotten.” Loki faked a laugh that was better than the last one; people were turning now, starting to look at them curiously and he thrived beneath the spotlight just as Thor floundered.

“Why I do believe you had the honour of being one of the _worst_ bands it was ever our misfortune to play with. Did you really follow us all the way the new world? Such perseverance. I’m afraid we aren’t in need of a support act right now and if we did –” he gave Thor a long look that was so withering Thor believed it utterly – “We’d find someone capable of holding a tune in a bucket.”

Thor stood, bereft, as the laughing green eyes turned away. Loki could grin in all earnest knowing that he narrowed them out of guilt and not the disgust he was feigning so well. He could hear himself, feel himself behaving so wretchedly and could do nothing to stop himself. He felt like he was choking on bile, and turned away with the most dazzling dismissive poise because of, more than in spite of, the confusion inside. He had almost completed a full turn, swivelling on his heel as graceful as a dancer when he felt a second tap on the shoulder. He turned back slowly, languidly, softly sighing and rolling his eyes –

“Alright, but I can tell you I’m _so_ bored right –” and Sif punched him in the face. The room exploded in uproar, half shouting at her, half rushing to Loki’s aid.

“Come on Thor,” she muttered, thin lipped in the surrounding panic. She took his arm and all but dragged him away.

-x-

“You can try them again later,” Fandral was saying, far too reasonably for Thor to be able to deal – “Or – god knows there’s plenty of other bands would relish the opportunity – hell it’s just publicity, it doesn’t been have to be a band – we could get an actor or – or –”

“Shit Fandral –” Sif looked over to Thor, slumped deeper into his hotel room chair than she had ever seen him slump, face squashed into his hand in silent sorrow – “Will you shut _up_ already?”

Fandral started to babble something, looked at Sif, looked at Thor, looked at Sif again, noted the angle of her eyebrows and the pointed look she was giving him and hurried out quickly.

Sif stared at Thor in silence for a long time. Eventually he looked back. There was a look of decision in his face that made her heart sink.

“Thor no,” she said, but –

“I’m going to try again,” he said.

“Oh my god,” she said.

-x-

Loki was a riot of sensation; electricity prickled his skin, it was knowledge, awareness, guilt and so many other things. It was the knowledge that he behaved unforgivably and the awareness that he did not find it as funny as he ought to have – as he usually _would_ have. It was a feeling of tightness in his chest. It was a fear that this was it, Thor would never try again; that he would go away for good this time – _like he went away before_ his brain supplied. It was a fear that Thor would _not_ go away, and all this nasty prickliness inside would have to come out. He could lose his cool. He could demonstrate genuine emotion. He could be forced – and this was the worst – to tell the _truth._ He shuddered and spent twice as long that night getting dressed and perfect even than he usually did.

It was some kind of charity event. He was performing briefly and then mingling. He couldn’t give a fuck about charity, but he did enjoy the mingling and loved the performing. He smiled at himself in the ballroom mirrors; he was copper and gold and cream today to match the walls and hangings, _part of the furniture_ he thought and then wondered if that was really as good a statement as it had seemed at the time. Gold lips smiled back at him and a diamante teardrop winked rainbows in the crystal light. He had tipped his nails with crystal and determined not to drink too much or else have no option but be fascinated by watching his beautiful fingers move.

 _Fuck me I am beautiful,_ he thought, flirting with his reflection, but then the sour thought – _if they only knew what I really looked like._ He was a walking lie, swishing opulent beauty covering rancid snakeskin. He didn’t care. Didn’t. Care. Loki loved himself; everybody knew that.

And he was scanning the teeming ballroom to get a good overview, that was all. At first he did not even see Thor, looking utterly ridiculous with a tiny champagne glass in a massive hand. Then he _did_ see him. His gaze moved swiftly on, not caring. He glanced back only to prove to himself how much he did not care. He walked straight past Thor, throwing glamorous air kisses at a celebrity he only vaguely knew, stood just behind him.

Thor had been determined to be cooler about this than the first time. Even so when Loki passed by so close, brushing his arm and he could _smell_ him, champagne and rain and fire all at once – he wondered if he could really do this after all. These champagne glasses were ridiculous; he quietly acquired a stack of more than half a dozen empties. Eventually even Sif gave up on him and wandered off.

In a moment of diabolical timing it was just on the back of Sif’s departure that he caught a scrap of conversation from Loki, who had drifted nearby somehow again.

“Who _is_ that one?”

“Which one?” So superior, so unconcerned.

“The tall, English gentleman with the marvellous hair. He hardly stops staring at you, did you know?”

Thor looked down at the floor quickly, but it did not stop him hearing the rest; Loki’s brusque snort and fake fucking laugh –

“ _Groupies,_ ” he sneered, waving Thor’s entire existence away with a casual gesture – “Will you excuse me?” He sashayed past Thor with his nose in the air as though he was something that smelled bad.

That was it.

Thor let Loki nearly get past him before grabbing his arm and yanking him round to face him;

“What the hell are you doing?” he growled

“Says the man grabbing _my_ arm. _Ouch_ by the way. Let go.”

“No. I came all this damn way and you’re just going to brush me off like some god damn groupie?”

“Well yes. What, did you think you were the only fling I had in the past five years? Piss off – I’ve –”

“I _don’t_ want to hear about it –” he snarled, suddenly savage; he really, really didn’t.

“Tough. Sorry to burst your bubble sweetie, but if you want a piece of me you’ll have to get in line and –” Loki actually leaned in, whispering – “It’s a really, _really long line.”_

Thor actually growled then, and shook him in frustration.

“Nice,” Loki spat – “Nice comeback. Jesus, you were the worst mistake I ever made.”

“I thought –”

“You thought you were what? Special? Oh you _are_ fuckingspecial. Coming _all this way_ – what? You want a pat on the head for being such a good dog? You’re a fool. A simple minded, useless imbecilic fool –”

“Better a fool than a vain, lying, superficial –”

“Oooh big word that _, superficial_ , take care or that single celled organism in your head might over heat.”

“ _Damn_ you, you –” Thor boiled, raged; he could never match Loki for words, he was not even sure why he bothered trying – “I was a fool,” he said flatly, letting go of his arm, surprised to see a brief flicker of disappointment in those reflective darting eyes. This time he turned and walked away, trying to ignore that Loki was smiling knowingly at his back.

He wondered, as he felt in his pocket later, if anyone had ever slipped their phone number into someone’s pocket in the thick of an argument before.

__x__

 

**OMG people what can I say except I AM SORRY, I AM SO SO SORRY, I knew it had been a while, didn’t realise it had been so long, I don’t know how to apologise enough except I DO absolutely know what’s happening in the next chapter this time and so it shouldn’t be nearly so long next time! I’ve had so much going on this month as well and all that, blah blah blah – it should all be calming down now I hope!**

**And yes….I do lie to wiggle a little tumbr meme into my writing now and then, couldn’t help myself, Loki made me do it. :-P**

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

 

 

Thor stared at the phone and the phone stared back belligerently. They had been going on like this for the better part of two hours now and Thor was starting to wonder who was going to crack first. The phone just grinned at him, knowing it was going to win. Thor raised his eyebrows at it threateningly. The phone did nothing. It did nothing obnoxiously, mockingly, _laughingly._ Thor was ready to punch its grinning silver dial, but knew that this way he would still be losing the fight.

Thor cursed softly into the silence.

He was usually extremely uncomfortable with silence. He was, _even now,_ extremely uncomfortable with it, even though it was a silence he had demanded of everyone, raging at everyone to hand and threatening diabolical action of an unspecified kind upon anyone who would be foolish enough to bother him until he announced otherwise.

He stared back down at the phone number in his hand; it mocked him just as meanly as the phone did. He had practically memorised it by now anyway, and the spidery handwriting had been rubbed away to faintness on the crumpled piece of paper.

He reached his hand to the phone for the thousandth time, nearly touched it this time and dropped his hand again with a heavy groan at his own uselessness. He decided to try pacing; pacing and thinking. He _had_ to talk to Loki. He _couldn’t_ talk to Loki. What the hell was he going to say? Just blurt out his feelings like an idiot? What the hell _were_ his feelings anyway? Loki was right; it was just a one-time mistake, a stupid, stupid thing he should have left well behind him.

He _had_ to talk to him.

Thinking was bad. Thinking was really bad. He turned on the radio instead, hoping to distract himself enough to pick up the god damn phone whilst his own back were turned as it were, while he would not catch himself doing it to stop himself.

He turned the music down low and bashed out the phone number at the same time. It rang forever. He was going to put it down. He had sweaty hands. To his mingled horror and accelerated heartbeat he heard Loki’s voice on the other end, cool as a crystal bloody stream.

“Hello?”

He slammed the phone down in terror.

He was shaking, actively shaking.

“Get it together you fucking reject,” he muttered to himself. He took a deep breath and dialled again. His hands were shaking so much it took him half a dozen tries before he got the number right. Loki picked up more quickly this time;

“ _Hello?”_ Thor could blatantly hear how quickly he was becoming narked off with his weirdo crank caller. He opened his mouth to speak and promptly put the phone down again. It did not quite sit right and he heard Loki drawling into the phone –

“Look if you want to know what colour underwear I’m wearing –”

Thor slammed the phone back hard in its cradle. It was ten minutes before he dared try again. This time Loki tried a different tack –

“Thor? Is that you? _Yes_ you have my number. Yes, it’s to use, not just to masturbate furiously into. God, now I hope that _is_ you. Maybe. Then again maybe not.”

Thor _really_ tried to speak this time but to his horror all that came out of his mouth was a broken, high pitched _eeeeeeh_ sound. Mortified, he put the phone down again, hard.

He squirmed in his chair, kicked the table leg, pushed himself back on the back two legs of his chair, hoped to god he might fall back and crack his stupid head. Why was this so difficult anyway? His head swam; it took a long time for him to be able to focus. He reached for the whiskey; the bottle was empty. He did not remember it becoming empty. That was bad. After a long grope in the swirling fog of mental confusion he finally let the gentle rock of the radio come through. Music helped. He had always understood it, better really than people. He knew the song, it was nearly over by the time his brain let him make all the right connections, shitting fucking hell, he knew it and he knew the voice. Fucking Loki. He was _everywhere_ and if Thor knew one thing it was that, whatever it meant, he would never be able to just leave him in the past. He knew this one of course, he knew them all – _Bring me the storm and the lightning strike, bring me the thunder again, I want to dance in the flickering light, I want to dance in the rain –_

They’d still been _Destiny’s Illusion_ back then, Thor remembered, in fact it was less than half a year after they went back to America, listening now he remembered, Loki referenced it in the song - _Lost in the new world, safe from the storm, I’ll walk in a diffident rain, If there’s one thing I know that I want it’s just this, bring me the thunder again._

Thor frowned, listening. He wondered if he was being stupid, if he was reading something into this that simply was not there, but he could not completely quell a surge of hope and with it an idea. A ridiculous one, but it would not go away.

Even though there was no way he could be right, the stupid idea that had taken hold of him would not leave him. In fact it energised him. He got up and dragged a suitcase out from under his bed. He took a copy of every record he had ever made with him, everywhere he went, and they were all in here, in a battered brown suitcase. He turned off the radio and dragged the whole lot over to the middle of the room, put the phone down on the floor and dragged the record player over as well. Now, suddenly in the grip of the Idea, he knew exactly what he was doing and his fingers flew to the right record, never shaking as he set it up, hovered his finger over the needle and dialled Loki’s number again. This time he replied to Loki’s weary –

“Hello,” by pressing the needle down.

It was an old song now, written too soon after Loki’s leaving to make any denial of the connection possible. But he had denied it anyway. It had been back in the days before he had realised how corny dramatic spoken openings to a song were and this one began, _Whatever I have said, whatever I have done to lead you to this I am truly sorry. I take it back._ Thor played the song right through, right through the dramatic guitar that followed and the clambering drums that joined in, right to the final – _I got my lines so wrong that night, it was a part I should never have played, If there was anything I could have changed, I would have stayed, I would have stayed._

Thor put the phone down. His heart was beating a rapid red hammer beat. He wondered what would happen next. Would Loki even reply? How _did_ you reply to that? Was it the right song, the right words? Maybe Loki would just laugh at him for the song being shit.

The phone rang. Thor nearly died. He stared at it for a moment before finally picking it up. He had hardly finished saying _hello_ before he heard the gentle scratch and crackle of needle on vinyl and the first verse of _Liar_ sifted across to him over the phone;

_I never said much, but to lie, I was born to be untrue, I lied my way from birth to stage, I lied in leaving you._

By the end of the song Thor was rummaging through his own records with the phone held between his shoulder and ear. When Loki hung up on him at the end of the song he was ready with a copy of _Silver tongue._ Loki countered with _Salmon Rum,_ the song he had started explaining to Thor so long ago; the song of how the trickster finally got caught by the god of thunder. Thor played _Green Eyes,_ Loki played _Shadow in the Shade,_ Thor played _Live in your Lie,_ Loki played _Welcome the Summer._ Thor sat through their songs as though in a dream; Loki, on the other end of the phone, alternately, lounged and paced, tried not to laugh, tried not to cry and ultimately flew on the notes as though they were wings.

Halfway through _Welcome the Summer_ Thor stared to wonder if he should do it. He was holding the vinyl of _Red Snow, Green Fire_ in his hand, staring at it, wondering what was scarier, admitting the truth behind the lyrics to himself or to Loki. At the end of the song _(But I couldn’t say, though I reached so high, that I didn’t deserve to fly. But your blue was the blue of a secret sky and I welcome the summer that lives in your eyes) –_ Thor put the disc quickly in place and played it back before he could think about it twice.

It was one of his newer songs, and frighteningly true. Thor found himself listening to it himself; so intent, so afraid that when the last verse began he never heard the hotel room door open and something as silent as a shadow slip in. Didn’t notice a thing until a voice behind him purred –

“Well. Shall we talk?” He whipped around, the phone falling from his fingers. Loki stood, arms folded across his chest, looking more different than Thor had ever seen him – “I mean,” Loki went on quickly – “If I’m not interrupting your call, that is.”

__x__

**It was getting awkward to put all the lyrics I wanted into this chapter so eh, here as a bonus are three verses of _Red Snow, Green Fire._ Enjoy.**

_We were caught inside a moment/ In a moment in between/ You left behind a scrap of red/ I left behind the green// Sometime before the morning/ Sometime after the start/ Sometime between the first and last/ You took away my heart// I didn’t want to feel/ But I know that this is true/ Sometime between the first and last/I fell in love with you._

**I mean, ok, I think we’ve fairly well established that I suck at lyrics, I can use like one rhythm and that’s Emily Dickinson all the way, but I liked the idea better of using their own songs than ripping off existing ones or something, so meh, deal with my sucky lyrics!! Also, I stole this idea from “Virgin Suicides” :-)**

**If It makes anyone feel better about this sucky chapter the next one is not, how do I put this….gonna have as much talking in it as Loki thinks. ;-)**


	9. Chapter 9

 

Thor blinked, put the record in his hand down, looked again. He wondered for longer than he should have over what it was about Loki that made him look so different. Of course he was standing less still than he had ever seen a man stand; he was tapping his foot against the floor, his arms folded across his chest painfully defensively and the fingertips of one hand tapping a jittery rhythm out of beat with the music against his arm. His nail looked chewed, the varnish black and cracked. He looked about as shifty as Thor had ever seen, chewing his lip, eyes narrowed. But none of that was it.

Then Thor realised. He had never seen Loki without make up before. Even the night they had spent together – Loki had come out of it with eyeliner streaking his cheeks and bright silver smearing wings out from his eyes. He could not look hard enough; had never seen him look more beautiful. Loki’s face without make up was almost painfully sweet, pale and awkwardly innocent, like the face of someone who did not know what to do with his own goodness. As though he was afraid it might show and maybe, after all, that was why he always covered it over.

More than even this, it made Thor do a double – triple take to see him dressed like a person; not an alien or a character or even a rock star. As though he had actually left the house without thinking about it; indeed he was not even wearing a coat, just a rough dull green shirt and black leather jeans. He was still undeniably Loki, but it was a Loki he had never seen. He wondered if anyone ever had. Loki was the kind of creature who would get out of bed in the middle of the night just to re-do his make up before morning.

Loki was looking at him suspiciously, jitters flashing in those naked green eyes and Thor became aware that he was still sat on the floor like a fucking monkey in the presence of his god.

“Loki –” he began, getting to his feet, in one blow all too aware of all that he had said and not said in his songs, aware too that Loki would have missed the confession of the final song in coming over here. It was, of course, in that moment of silence, whilst he struggled to find the right words that the treacherous vinyl sang out –

“I didn’t want to say it, but I know that this is true, sometime between the first and last, I fell in love with you.”

With Loki standing right there, raising his eyebrow in a way that told Thor quite plainly he had heard – it was too much. Thor kicked the record player for betraying him. Thankfully, after a cursory grumble it did go silent, if too late to take it back or make anything better.

“I –” he began. Loki took a step back as though afraid.

“No –”

“But you said – and we – to talk –” Thor mumbled stupidly.

“No” Loki said again – “Lied. I lied. Thor please don’t –”

If Thor had still harboured any doubts as to his feelings, any denials or reservations, they went out with the uncertainty and the smallness in Loki’s voice and Loki shivered, imploring him with that face nobody else had ever seen, not to make him say it, say _anything._ Thor saw that lip tremble, saw Loki looking as though he was about to take flight and could not let him go, could not let him tremble, had to risk being pushed away.

He was not pushed away. He barely felt himself move, barely felt anything until those soft lips were beneath his again and it was electric, like a storm throwing rain upon desperate ground. Loki’s lips stopped trembling in the instant second of the kiss, almost, Thor thought, as though he had been waiting too, holding on in a five year limbo just as he had been.

He had forgotten this; at the same time as living in the memory; how kissing Loki was like a fight, skin straining against skin, muscles twisting in confusion. Loki grabbed and reached at the same time as he arched away, Thor held him tight, not sure if Loki meant to consume him or fight him off. Loki was unsure himself. He was always unsure. He hated it, refuted it, came out more certain of everything than ever.

It was like wrestling a snake, Thor thought, with that part of his brain that was still half way coherent _(silver tongue you trap me, lick up my every word, silver tongue you lie to me, speak things I never heard)._ Loki was the song, he always had been, a twisting, writhing road of song; every note that had ever brought him fame, to touch him was to sing the song at maximum volume, a volume that had gone muted for far too long.

Music ran through their fingers that night, bound together in a rhythm that played only in the blood. With every awkward step towards the bed Loki sang an undercurrent of lies, starting with _This doesn’t mean – Don’t start thinking – Thor I won’t –_ ending only when Thor shook his head with a smile and sigh and a –

“Loki – shut up”.

There was time and room for a gentleness he had not been able to show before; indeed, so wrapped up was he in this feeling of rightness, of _completeness_ that his erection was almost a secondary concern. He wondered almost, if he could not have just held onto Loki tight while they whispered song lyrics at each other, fashioning them into truths they had gone too long not admitting. But Loki would have fought it tooth and nail, indeed every time he met his eyes of touched him too gently Loki would look away and promptly do something - a flick of the tongue or wrist – anything to force Thor out of affection and back into lust.

Not that Thor could ever complain; sinking back inside that lithe, perfect body was like coming home. Loki was all muscle and sinew and stronger than he remembered and he made it delightfully difficult for Thor to pin him down, rolling and twisting and often pinning Thor in return, smirking to see the blue eyes shining up at him in an adoration he could accept because worship was easier to take than love.

Nevertheless, on the second orgasm, the fiercest and most intense, Loki sank down onto his chest trembling and wide-eyed, lips parted in beautiful fear. Thor stroked his hair, like wet silk and feathers and told him it was alright and he was safe and _I’ve got you_ until Loki, too fluid and warm to protest, accepted it and tucked his head beneath Thor’s chin, dozing on him like a cat. In the breaking dawn, before Thor fell asleep, he whispered something that Loki pretended not to hear.

-x-

“Well,” Loki announced sleepily, when he woke up yawning at the crack of noon – “Here we are”. He woke in the curve of Thor’s arm and had practised this just before Thor showed signs of being awake. Loki stretched, dramatically. Thor watched him roll his head, entranced by every movement beneath the skin, entranced by every harsh line and angle of Loki’s face, wondering how such edges could feel so soft. Loki only had to make the faintest move out of bed for Thor to take his arm, hard.

“No,” he said “Not this time”.

Loki rolled his eyes, opened his mouth to say something, anything; probably something important, something to allay all the questions he had buzzing in his head like bees. Instead he yawned, falsely, kissed Thor on the nose and shook his head –

“I’m not going anywhere –” he drawled.

“Good,” Thor agreed.

“But I _can_ go to the bathroom I assume, unless you want me to introduce you to some brand new kinks?”

This time it was Thor’s turn to roll his eyes, but he let Loki go, waiting until he was just inside the bathroom to call –

“What makes you think that’s new?”

He was rewarded by the faint sound of a chuckle from the bathroom and Loki waited until he was back in the bedroom to arch an eyebrow and announce deadpan –

“I’m impressed”; before slipping back into bed and draping Thor’s arm around his shoulder as though it were a sheet.

__x__

**Shock, horror, are these boys going to have an actual _relationship?_ Hold out til next chapter where they try to work it out and Fandral comes up with the best ways to cash in on the young love of Rock stars! :-)**


	10. Chapter 10

 

“Loki –” Thor could not believe he wanted to say this but he did – “Loki, please put some clothes on, this is the kitchen.”

It turned out Thor was a big enough star, even in America, to be able to demand a hotel suite with its own mini – kitchen. His band would never understand why, in spite of all the opportunities to be waited upon, he preferred to cook for himself at every available opportunity- and Thor would never tell them how cooking was almost dearer to his heart than music.

“Jesus, Thor –” Loki stretched, groaned and rolled his eyes all at once – “I thought you were a rock star”.

“Well, I am a rock star who is currently attempting to make us breakfast and your insistent nakedness is extremely distracting.”

“Oh grow up.”

“You grow up. Put something on, or there’ll be no pancakes.”

“Thor that makes no sense – you can’t –”

“Damn it Loki, just cover your junk!”

“How about I _wear_ a pancake Thor? How about that?”

“Loki –”

“I’m going –”  Loki had his hands up in surrender as he sashayed out the door.

__x__

“Thor, exactly how big do you need to be?” Loki came back in grumbling five minutes later, swathed in one of Thor’s dressing gowns.

“You _have_ actual clothing somewhere –” Thor reddened – “On the floor.”

“ _Seriously?_ After last night you’re going red at the thought of some errant trousers? Anyway it’s too early in the morning for actual clothing.”

“It’s not morning, Loki.”

“It’s too early in the day. Shut up Thor. Give me coffee.”

Thor beamed, aware that he made the best coffee known to man. It had always successfully silenced anyone who had tried it for at least several minutes of joy.

“Give me juice,” Loki said, instantly.

“No, no, no – you cannot be disliking my coffee –” For a moment Thor felt his world could spiral out of control.

“It’s good coffee. I just also require juice.”

Thor groaned.

“And your last slave died of?”

“Juice,” Loki repeated. Thor could only assume he was re-iterating his demand, and not replying that his last slave had died of juice.

Thor had been so sure that Loki would be weird about the domesticity of breakfast that he had been nervous the whole time he was in the kitchen, waiting for Loki to appear from out the shower. Loki, to his great lack of surprise, took _forever_ in the shower and emerged shining and ridiculously chipper. He would not even have been surprised if Loki _had_ been weird; he had been so nervous himself about taking this step that only cooking the most incredible heap of pancakes had managed to steady his hands. He had been just as surprised also in seeing the amount that Loki could eat. He had spent longer than he would ever care to admit imagining Loki’s life and the way he might undertake the trivialities of day to day existence. When he _could_ imagine such things, he realised he had always assumed that Loki was some strange ethereal creature who subsided on air and absinthe. Maybe he picked at a canapé at a party now and then but that was probably it. In actual fact Loki beat him in their pancake contest nine to seven, until Thor was gawping at him dumbfounded wondering where in the world it all went.

“I always thought you would be some magical creature that barely ate,” he said, leaning back in his chair – “But that – that was truly magical.”

“Imagine me a lot did you?” Loki smirked, not missing a thing.

That was when the awkward that Thor had been expecting and fearing ever since he woke up hit in. He wondered if he had put himself into it by expecting it so hard. Loki went quiet when he did, but where he looked away and hardly dared to move Loki seemed to struggle to keep still.

“I should –” he got up, edging away, gesturing the door – “I should go –”

Panic leapt up in Thor’s chest, forcing him to move; he did not mean to grab Loki as hard as he did but he could not, _would_ not just let this fall away for another five years, not now. Just for a moment it felt like his very survival hung in the air and he held Loki hard, ignoring his muttered _ouch._

“No Loki. Not again. I can’t – you – I – fuck –”

“You _what_ Thor?” Loki snapped – “What exactly did you think was going to happen here? We were gonna – what? Collaborate? Go out? Tracy and Hepburn for the seventies? We can’t – I don’t –”

“You don’t – that’s bullshit Loki –”

“No I really don’t – I don’t _date –”_ Loki sneered – “Read a magazine sometime, I’m _sacrosanct, perfection, elegance walking hand in hand with lies_ – and I don’t _date_ –” he almost spat the word out.

“Still bullshit. You’re scared.” Thor knew it, he could see it in Loki’s eyes. He knew it because he was scared himself, although he was not about to admit that just yet, not until he had to.

“I am _not_ – fuck off, you know _nothing_ Thor – nothing – you’re just a big dumb –”

“I’m a big dumb blah blah blah – I got it, I don’t care, I’m a big dumb blah blah blah who’s not letting you go again. Can you honestly tell me you _want_ to just run out now?”

“Yes!” Loki lied quickly – “Yes, guess what – I can –”

“You’re lying –”

“Fuck you!”

“Suave Loki, really good –”

“Shut up Thor, let me go!”

“Never.”

“I hate you!”

Loki glared at him for a beat, his eyes on fire. Thor tensed, feeling his body arch against him, uncertain if Loki meant to push him away or –

Loki kissed him, angrily, _furiously,_ twisting up against him almost in a rage. Thor didn’t fight it, did not even want to and it was, of course, at this moment, that Fandral chose to walk into the suite uninvited.

“Oh good,” he announced, walking past them, sitting down at the table and pouring himself the last of the coffee – “Glad to see you finally worked it out.”

“We – but –” Thor spluttered, realising that he did not want to go into the intricacies of whether or not they had actually worked _anything_ out with Fandral – “Get out!”

“Oh –” Loki added – “Thor is this the guy you described as less use than a chocolate teapot because at least you can eat a chocolate –”

“Yes!” Thor groaned quickly – “Yes, thank you Loki, that really helps.”

“So I’ve got about a dozen plans for you two,” Fandral went on, blithely dismissing the abuse as had come to be the most fundamental part of his job – “You want to come down to the restaurant? We can talk business and do breakfast –”

“We’ve _done_ breakfast,” Thor moaned – “Honestly, we’ve done so much breakfast we may die –”

“Great. _I’ll_ do breakfast and you two can sit there with cocktails preserving some rock star ego and attitude and pretend like you’re too good for breakfast, in fact – what the hell – you don’t even eat am I right? You can do that waiflike rock star thing and we’ll _talk. Business.”_

“Actually that sounds reasonable,” Loki shrugged.

“I hate you both,” Thor sighed, beaten. But it meant Loki wasn’t going anywhere, he guessed, so he took it.

“Brilliant,” Loki added – “Now, if you’ll just give me five minutes with Thor’s wardrobe I’ll see if I can find something suitably debauched to wear.”

He smiled brightly and dragged Thor away to get dressed.

Fandral looked from one to the other as they went and smiled with dollar signs gleaming in his eyes. It was clear to _him_ what was happening; now he just needed to make the world see that it was happening. He all but rubbed his hands in glee.

__x__

 

**So yeah, I snuck three direct quotations from _Velvet Goldmine_ in this chapter….and if you’re not envisioning a Fandral played by Eddie Izzard right now you’re doing something wrong. :-P**

**Also I noticed someone on tumblr (I'm sorry I don' know who, if anyone does know please let me know!) made a picture of Loki with the caption "Elegance walking hand in hand with lies" which made me 100 % squee because it fit the _Velvet Goldmine_ AU so well and I was going to use the line myself! So...eeeeee! :-)**

 


	11. Chapter 11

 

 

“Sometimes, Loki,” Thor said thoughtfully – “I don’t know if I know you. Sometimes I wonder if one day I’ll look up and you’ll have become someone else.”

“Maybe I will,” Loki twisted in a sunbeam, smiling enigmatically through his own coils – “But then again I always was.”

Thor frowned and let it go, not sure if Loki was being deep or just trying to sound clever; but something in the words stuck in his brain like a bright jagged piece of rainbow glass that would jab him again later someday.

-x-

The combined package of Thor and Loki together exploded onto the glam rock scene of the late seventies in a colourful burst of sequins, sparkle and witty repartee. The wrapping was Fandral’s; the Romance was real, however much the magazines and excited reporters decided to fictionalise it.

The fiction, however, was dazzling, hiding the truth as it did in a spectrum of pretty words nobody ever could have imagined were true, least of all the principal players in everybody’s new favourite Romance. Thor was gently bemused at their sudden smashing success, their popularity; the hordes of fans who wanted to revel in a fairy tale he was not sure quite existed. Loki told him constantly that his view on reality was severely limited; that he was being dense and dull in limiting himself to what he thought to be true and suggested that he should instead revel in their Romance like the rest of the world.

“You’re saying we’re in love, Loki, is that what you’re saying?” Thor teased him on an afternoon that was a morning to them, recently awake and still not out of bed. Thor was propped up against yet another headboard in yet another hotel yawning while he watched and argued with Loki who was sprawled across the top of the covers naked as the sunlight that streamed in through the window, skimming tabloids and magazines for more reflections of himself.

Thor grinned, thinking he had Loki cornered for once; Loki _never_ said the L word, never admitted it and sneered when Thor did.

“I’m saying the papers say so.” Loki yawned lazily, stretching and turning to Thor, to tap the page – “Music resonates from the devoted duo like a love song for the electric guitar, a symphony of sound and passion that sings out the greatest love song of the glam rock age,” Loki read aloud with drawling melodrama. “That’s us, that is.” He ruined it by adding.

“Is it now.”

“Oh it must be. They wouldn’t write it so….agonizingly if it wasn’t.”

“You are not being serious.”

“Well fuck me, you’re fast.”

Loki _loved_ the media attention, whether he thought it was true or not; he always had. It seemed to Thor that he completely craved it, fed on it – and sometimes he could not help but feel – ridiculous though he supposed it was – bizarrely jealous – as though he had to share Loki with the rest of the world. He supposed he had always known, really, that he would have to, but what he had not expected was that it would be so difficult.

The newspapers fed on them in return; eating up the highly contrived photoshoot in which Loki had announced their joint plan to take over the world and Thor had raised a toast to him as the most beautiful man in it. Then there was _that_ kiss – the one that had hit all of the papers like a thunderstorm, blown up across posters and magazine stands across the world; they went up in bedrooms from London to Sydney, New York to Tokyo, on billboards and advertising campaigns, their faces tricked out in black and white, sepia and every shade of colour, swirling in heady lights and glitter, all the music of the age and a romantic sentiment glam rock tried to deny caught up in one perfect image of love.

And it was a staged image, saturated love. It haunted Thor until he wondered if Loki ever kissed him without the hope – even if it was subconscious - that someone would see and delight in it. He had tried expressing this – it was natural to him to try and express his every feeling now that he had someone worth feeling for. Loki had told him he was being silly; he was dismissive and affected and it had only solidified the worry in Thor.

And they argued. About that and about everything. Because Loki was _always_ dismissive and affected. Because Loki could not do an interview without flirting at the camera. Because Thor would not understand that it was all an act. Because everything Loki did was an act and Thor could not begin to judge if anything he said or did was real. Because the spotlight blinded them both to their own relationship, turning it into a story that neither could quite believe in however close to true it was. Because Loki, as Thor so often said, would not know what truth meant if it bit him on the ass. Because Thor so often said it. There were a thousand reasons to fight and only a handful to get back together again each time they broke up. And yet.

The papers loved that too. They were there every time one or the other stormed out of a recording studio or a hotel screaming that they never wanted to see the other one again. They were there the next morning breaking the public’s heart with this horrible news; the disillusion of the newfound harmony between metal and glam rock.

“They do realise we’re just people right?” Thor asked one time, looking over coverage of their latest break-up.

“Thor, you are sweet -” Loki shook his head, smiling ruefully – “Of course they don’t.”

_Sweet._ Thor thought – sweet was getting back together again, the collision of need and desire that threw them back together after the fury of separation. Sweet was Loki in his sleep when his face stilled to the innocence of a child. Sweet was the music they made together in more ways than one. _Sweet_ was what they could be if the world stopped peeking in.

“Besides –” Loki said – “I’m not _people”._

“What are you then?” Thor laughed.

“Read a bio Thor – I’m a space age rock persona, and that’s just for starters.”

Thor was never quite sure what to say to this kind of statement, always faintly nervous that Loki believed this more completely than he would say, never wanting to ask for fear of argument and that his fears might be justified.

“Are you going to read that rubbish all day?” he asked that same afternoon.

“It is _not_ rubbish!” Loki objected in his most faux hurt tone – “It’s all about _me._ There’s so many photos in this one it’s like looking in a mirror.”

“Well then you’re inordinately vain.”

“Well of _course,”_ Loki pouted, twizzling round and kneeling in the bed, looking over at Thor and casually preening – “Just _look_ at me.”

Thor did.

“Yes Loki,” he smiled, sighed. Loki was like a living sculpture, pale and silver and dark picked out in tones of sunlight and shadow, so beautiful it was hard for him to think. So much shivered on his tongue that he wanted to say to express this and in the end all he managed was “I see”.

Perhaps it was enough, though – _I See_ became the title of the song they wrote that day, a song that went to number one by the end of the week. And, words being poor things, Thor had risen up out of the bed sheets, catching Loki around the waist. The softness and the hardness of him made his fingers tingle, then his cock, and lust spiralled inside him like a coil of molten gold. Loki was a shockwave to the senses, a relentless stroking of the brain and a tongue of sunlight licking at the skin. He was the only drug Thor would ever be on. His one fear was that he would never be able to hold on to all of this writhing, shimmering perfection.

Loki’s one fear was that with all this sweet sensation he could actually become accustomed to himself. He might stop running and hiding, dipping beneath the waters of the age so the gods would not catch him. He was afraid he could become dull through being happy. He could become someone he liked. It seemed so ill at ease with the picture he had drawn of himself – sketchy and prismatic, dancing with shining rainbows and ugly black spikes – he could hardly face it. He was afraid he could become drawn down from the heavens he inhabited and become content with being mortal.

Luckily he was beginning to formulate a plan. One that would make everything more interesting.

__x__

**I’ll be interested to see if anyone guesses what Loki’s plan is! Once again, thank you for waiting so patiently for this chapter, I’m having a hard time writing seriously of late which is a shame because when I get started I love writing this so much! Don’t anyone think I’m planning to give up on this though – I know where it’s going and it _will_ get finished – however long I am about it! :-)**


	12. Chapter 12

 

**Warning in this chapter for Loki being a mega little shit, I probably really should be more specific but I don’t wanna ruin it for anyone!**

It was hard to say when Loki was being weird when _weird_ was something he had been carefully building into his personality for as long as anyone could remember.

But Loki was being weird. Thor was sure of it. Sure that Loki was talking to people about things that did not involve him, or worse, that he was ending these conversations with “Don’t tell Thor” and “Thor mustn’t know”. It was making him more than a little bit nervous but every time he felt like he had fully built up the intention to confront him about it Loki would do something more than usually sweet or affectionate, something he never realised was carefully designed to let Thor know that they were fine, more than fine, they were _wonderful._ He wondered that he kept being an idiot and falling for it, but he did.

-x-

Loki was in his element. He _loved_ making plans. He loved it, in truth, more than he even loved executing them. He loved that it was referred to as _executing._ He was dancing through the sky on a tightrope of his own brilliance. A tightrope he firmly believed was a great deal more secure than it was. In Loki’s mind nothing could really go wrong because he really did not care that much about any outcome for it to truly affect him. Nothing affected him deeply; he prided himself upon this and the little voice at the core of him that knew it was a lie just prided it all the more deeply for being so.

He was such a good liar he fooled himself. He _enjoyed_ fooling himself; admired his own persona and positively adored him.

“Sometimes,” he would say “I’d like to not be me – but only so I could fuck me”. Thor had taken note and never told Loki to go fuck himself, even in a serious argument – he knew Loki would either be delighted to do so or say he was anyway. Thor might even point out how often Loki waxed lyrical upon the wondrousness of being himself, on how often he had scorned the idea of being anyone else; but Loki seemed –  infuriatingly-  to even take the judgement that he was a walking contradiction of his own terms as a compliment.

Beneath this crackling bright shadow of busyness Loki was surprised – and Thor suspicious - to watch himself becoming increasingly more affectionate and sweet. Loki could only suppose it was the fallout from a vague feeling of guilt at the trick he planned to pull. It certainly wasn’t concern, and it definitely was not worry. Worry that if he got too comfortable Thor might see who he was and not like it. Worry that if Thor so much as saw him without a hint of make – up he would decide that he was ugly. It had nothing to do with the fact that he would sneak to the bathroom at night to re-apply eyeliner so that he would wake up perfect and Thor would never doubt that he was anything other than perfect. Certainly he did not give a shit whether or not Thor actually loved him, not care whether or not he cared. He certainly did not worry about the fact that he might be worrying and that this might make his insides wriggle and twist like mating snakes. That would just be silly.

He delivered the suggestion, the hint of his plan, to Thor one night with just the right amount of cool balanced with trepidation.

“Do you think –” he looked down, bit his lip, not so subconsciously wrinkled up his nose like he did when he was considering something nervously – “Would you be dreadfully sad if I had my own show next Thursday? Just a one off I mean – with _Lokasenna?”_

They worked together so consistently these days that it really was an odd request, if not, Thor thought, one deserving such an air of subterfuge as Loki had been demonstrating these past few weeks.

“Really?” he breathed out a huge sigh of relief – “Is that all?”

“What?” Loki blinked.

“Oh come on – you’ve been wanting to broach something with me for weeks – I was thinking – I don’t know what I was thinking.” Thor almost laughed, he was so glad it was out; Loki scowled inside, but he did not feel bad, not in the slightest – “I just – Loki –” he took Loki’s shoulders and Loki found it hard to meet his eye – “Loki, you shouldn’t ever be worried to ask me something like this – you know I’ll support whatever you want to do.”

Loki grinned inside from ear to ear, Thor was such an idiot; outwardly he smiled shyly;

“Well good, I was just – afraid you’d be upset.”

Thor shook his head at Loki’s silliness and kissed him on the forehead and that night Loki was more affectionate and open than it felt like he had ever been before. Loki felt it himself; a neediness and an ache to be close that had him twisting and writhing around Thor like ivy, clutching and grabbing and hissing to feel his skin, fucking him hard enough to stop his mind from working, to stop himself thinking. It worked, at least for the duration. At least until afterwards when Thor whispered that he loved him – something he seemed to do more and more of late and Loki felt a stab of what even he could not deny was fear and he could not reply, just smiled a tight smile and thought _yes, yes that’s it, that’s the thing - and I worked so hard to have nothing to lose._

__x__

When the time came Thor just stood on the side-lines and watched like everybody else. But where everybody else only felt like their world was falling apart for Thor it was true. And that world, the one they were all so invested in – that world was simply Loki.

It was the night of the big gig; Loki had asked him to come along as a watcher, just to join the audience like everyone else. He would enjoy it, he said, to know that Thor was watching him; it would add to his performance to know that there was one person amongst the adoring fans whose adoration was really real. It sounded like a bit of a cheap line to Thor; something Loki had heard somewhere else and liked the sound of – he was not sure Loki knew what _real_ meant – but in the end he liked the sound of it too and smiled as he kissed Loki in his dressing room and Loki said the words that haunted him afterwards –

“I’m scared Thor, I’m scared about tonight, I’ll feel safer if I know you’re there.”

Thor looked at him worriedly, with the bright backstage light glinting in his eyes and the rhinestones running down his neck and he felt a chill despite the smell of greasepaint melting in the overheads. Loki smiled, that strange tight smile again, and nodded _I’ll be okay, don’t worry about me, I’m just being silly I’m sure._ He had said these things a lot this past week and Thor had just kept reassuring him, just kept telling him the uneasy feeling was nerves at his first solo performance in so long. Even so Loki had gone about like a haunted creature, quiet and thoughtful, pale and wide eyed.

“Go!” Loki said, trying too hard to sound like he was making light of it – “Go find a good spot. You want to get my best angle don’t you?”

He had Loki’s best angle then he thought; shining in oily green and purple, shimmering when he moved. When he went away he still had a shimmer like fine diamonds dusting his shirt.

The gig went astoundingly; of course, Loki always did. The crowd was feverish; it seemed to Thor – who kept to the shadows where he would not be seen – that they were far more excited over Loki on his own than ever for the both of them. But it was different; what you saw from here, than what happened up there.

This, at the end; was what Thor saw:

The lights on the stage dimmed to low green and gold, the colours swirled like a river as Loki dived in and unveiled his new song as though it were a statue. The theme was the death of the Trickster as it had so often been before but there was a sorrow to it as Loki sang that sounded like a farewell. Thor felt in himself the most terrible feeling of unease; an unease that seemed to echo through the crowd who fell silent, looking shiftily from side to side. The place was packed, but towards the end of the song Thor found his eyes drawn to the closed off area, a small set of seating towards the side of the stage. The shadows there seemed to move strangely until he was sure he could see a strange tall figure there and whisperings around him suggested others in the audience had seen it too.

On the stage the green gold river moved and Loki swam in song through the dust motes, encased in starlight. The song rose higher and higher towards its end and in the darkness of the back of the stage the idea of a serpent swam in light and silk screen, glowing scaled reflecting across the floor of the stage. The Trickster closed his eyes and took a deep breath in token of surrender and when he spread his arms to fall back into the river of light a shot rang out brutally across the stadium.

From that moment on there was chaos; the music cut and Loki’s voice broke in the middle of his final note; he seemed to fall in slow motion and when the crimson started to pool at his throat the audience started to scream. People panicked and the crowd broke up and Thor; moving slowly, seeing everything just a step behind the rest, saw that the figure in the closed off area was gone.

It felt like he was in a dream, dazed, and it was hours before he looked back towards the stage, trying to wade his way there through the swamp of bodies. He did not react, could not react until he reached the stage where someone was choking out, in a voice of shock and awe, that Loki Laufeyson was dead.

__x__

**Am I gonna be cruel and not leave you any clues in my note this time? Well….yeah. :-P**

**Next chapter shouldn’t be too long a wait though. :-)**

 

 


	13. Chapter 13

**Trigger warnings because Thor is a great big mourning mess, vaguely alcoholic and suicidal. Good thing Loki never stays dead. :-)**

It felt to Thor as though somebody had turned off the volume on his life. The world had gone out of focus and the people who tried to talk to him in those next few days swam in and out of vision like the sun through water as he drowned. He reeled and staggered from place to place, feeling always as though he was about to fall and nobody would be there to catch him.

Loki could never have caught him anyway. He knew that. If Loki had ever been in the right place to catch him when he fell, he would have skipped aside at the last moment and let him hit the deck. He would have laughed about it afterwards whilst Thor nursed the bruises.

These bruises felt more like breaks and they were impossible to nurse. That night, when he finally found himself alone, and all of the swirling, babbling, silent crowd was gone, he drank to make the reeling make sense.

He figured if he got incredibly blazingly drunk it would no longer feel so strange and awful to feel so disoriented. He would have a reason. It might make something better.

There was nothing to make better. No way in which anything could be fixed. That night he wandered from room to room in the latest temporary apartment they had shared trying not to look too closely at any of Loki’s things, unable to look at anything else. He wondered how much he would have to drink before he just stopped – aside from that he could not even get his head around the thought of oblivion. It seemed he just carried on. It was all he had done before Loki, it was all he could do now.

He woke up the next morning with a volcano in his brain and Loki’s devastating death screaming out at him from the face of every newspaper and magazine that came through the door . There were a _lot –_ he realised. They were all Loki’s. Loki liked to read everything printed about himself, liked to admire himself in the mirror of the public gaze. Thor could not help but think how delighted he would be right now.

But he was not delighted because he was dead.

Loki was dead.

Loki was dead. The words still did not make any sense. They did not reduce him to sobbing fits or mad wretchedness. They did nothing. He stared at the papers and made coffee. When Fandral came to see him he replied to everything sensibly and measuredly. Said that he was fine. That he’d be alright. Asked about the police reports.

There were a curious lack of police reports. What there were was hundreds – no _thousands –_ of eye witnesses who all wanted to talk about how they witnessed the famous death. There were reports from ten times the number of people who were even at the show.

“Strangely,” the papers said “All reports are consistent” – the stories of those who had been there and those who had not. But it was not strange at all, Thor thought; the first stories had painted the vision of what happened so clearly that those who had not been there wished they had been so hard they could almost see it. They had drawn pictures of the figure Thor had seen in the stands but as far as he was concerned he looked like a creature out of fantasy. A cloaked figure in a wide brimmed hat who walked as though he could not fully see where he was going. _Strange_ Thor thought – was how everyone’s eyes had been drawn that way the same time as his.

What nobody seemed to have noticed was that Thor had been in the audience himself and over the next few days the papers started in on the idea that he had done it. He was the Jealous Boyfriend, the Lesser Star, the Tag Along to the main feature which had always been Loki. Of course it had always been Loki. The papers spoke so headily about him you would have thought a saint had died. Thor could imagine Loki reading the stories and grinning his head off. He could see Loki sprawled across their sofa or the bed, laughing at the stories and reading them out to him whether he cared or not. Every room of the flat he walked into Loki was there, grinning at him.

“The music will never die,” Loki said to him one morning, perched at the breakfast table in an emerald silk nightgown tapping the paper with a finger the way he used to – “The sweet and haunting sounds will live on forever, singing out the legend that was Loki Laufeyson”. Loki turned to him and grinned, all teeth, morning sunlight glinting in his eyes. Then he was gone.

Another morning he woke up from a dream, clutching his guts and reeling from a dream that Loki had stabbed him.

“You killed me Thor!” Loki had screamed in his ears and in the wind all around him “Why’d you kill me Thor?”

“I never –” Thor had started to say, but they were so high up, his words got eaten up by the wind – “I would never – Loki I love you.”

Loki was crying, enraged, shivering all at once;

“ _Sentiment,”_ he spat and stabbed him.

That day Loki appeared everywhere he went, following him with accusing eyes.

“I told you I was scared,” he would say, or “Why didn’t you listen?” One time he threw a newspaper across the room – “They say you killed me – they don’t know you really did!” he snarled. When he looked back Thor saw that the newspaper really had been thrown across the room. He did not remember that happening.

Thor tried not to go out; everywhere people looked at him with a depressing mix of sympathy and horror. He was torn between that and staying in the flat with Loki’s ghost.

When he finally left the house officially it was almost a week later and he was mobbed before he had walked down the front steps;

“Thor, did you kill Loki? Thor what are your feelings on Loki’s death? Thor were you there? Were you jealous of Loki’s success? What’s your best memory of Loki? Thor did you kill Loki? Did you kill Loki?”

Thor retreated back into his flat, back into himself. The question that rang in his ears was _what was your best memory?_ He was living in memory, as much as he was living; he felt it was up for debate at the moment. Loki on stage, in those early days when he hated him, his arrogance and flashiness and attitude – he remembered how beautiful Loki had been, how much he had been taken in, enthralled.

He remembered taking the stage together, him on his knees to mime fellating that guitar that Loki could not actually play but carried with him on that occasion just for that purpose. He remembered the first time Loki had taken his hand in public, almost shyly, not wanting to look at him. He remembered all those meals and the ridiculous amount that Loki could eat, remembered how sweet he looked asleep; all his features relaxed so much he looked like a child, innocent as the day through which they slept. He remembered the feel of his skin, Loki’s breath against him, remembered every touch like they were painted onto the inside of his head in glorious renaissance detail; a Sistine chapel of carnality.

More than anything, he remembered that first time on the roof. It felt like a dream now, or an enchantment, or the one time in his life anything had been really real. He remembered the taste of Loki’s skin, of his sweat and sparkle. He smelled of greasepaint and cream and leaves. The impossible smell of burning rain. He remembered fantastically the sound of cars far below echoing on the night air in a roundel of noise, a poem in a language he could understand for that night only. He remembered the colour of the sky; the green fire and silver sparkle of it. The stars had flashed in every shade of rainbow that night and yes, if he listened hard enough, he could hear them twinkle. He remembered wishing on the multitude of stars that fell to earth while they watched and waking up with silver glitter on his skin.

He remembered the magic and he remembered fucking it up. Finally he started to cry. He cried until he felt he would die before he stopped. They might find him dead and still crying. He had never really formulated an idea of how much he loved the world. Maybe he liked it some, maybe he didn’t – all he knew now was that without Loki it was all gone to shit. All poetry had fallen from him with the falling stars. Loki was the only star and he had not caught him.

The next day Fandral tried getting him out of the house for the second time; there were people, Fandral said, he had to take him to see; his band members and Loki’s. Thor was reluctant; Fandral insistent. This time they made it a few steps down the road before they were besieged;

“Thor did you kill Loki? Thor what do you have to say to recent suggestions that Loki faked his own death? Thor did you kill Loki?” Thor had _not_ heard the recent suggestions. He had given up on the papers. The idea had not even occurred to him. Loki would have _told_ him if he was pulling a stunt like that, there was no way he would have left it like this in the knowledge that Thor would presume him dead. Thor could not even think it. The crowd pressed and clucked so loudly after all the silence in his life this past week it was too much; Thor screamed at them to fuck off and when they did not he broke through and ran.

He did not know where he was going, but finally, down an alley between two city blocks he felt the quiet come back and with it his knees gave way and he slumped hard against the brick, head in his hands, defeated.

He did not know how long he had sat there, time had stopped for him a week ago, maybe a year or two - on a gunshot. Eventually he heard footsteps. He did not look up until a voice called his name –

“Thor Odinson?”

“Go away.”

The footsteps came closer.

“I said go away!” He had not known he could feel lower than he did; but he felt like he might break through the pavement he was so heavy. A persistent and unshakeable reporter was the last thing he wanted –

“I’m not interested. I just want to be left alone.”

He could feel the person standing over him, watching him.

“For fuck’s sake,” Thor mumbled into his hands – “If I just tell you I did it will you go away?”

“Did what?”

“I did it. I killed Loki. Are you happy now?”

“No not really. In fact I strongly suspect you may be lying. You’re not very good at it, you know.”

“What the –” Thor heard the voice properly for the first time and finally he looked up – “Loki”. His heart came back to life as his eyes turned to flint.

“Miss me?” Loki smirked.

__x__

**Here, have a bad Loki to brighten up your day! :-)**

 

 


	14. Chapter 14

**Some slightly dub – con shenanigans in this chapter. Just to let you know. :-)**

All of a sudden the volume he had been missing came back into Thor’s life. After all the silence, the strange underwater sensations, it was as though someone had slammed that switch on too hard. Everything was too bright, too loud.

“Loki,” he said, rubbing a hand hard over his face, squinting as though Loki was an illusion.

“Miss me?” Loki said again; he was still smiling, cocky, arms folded across his chest, looking as though he could imagine nothing other than Thor’s utter delight at seeing him back. Thor just stared at him.

“I thought you were dead,” he said eventually, stupidly, heavily.

Loki’s eyes narrowed, he raised an eyebrow;

“Did you mourn?” He was amused, curious, scathing – mostly all Thor heard was a vague amusement. It made him angry. He thought about how _hard_ he had mourned, how deeply and it made him _furious._

“You –” he growled, standing up slowly, fists clenched tightly – “You should have told me –” It became truer as he said it out loud; he took Loki by the shoulders before he could slip aside and shook him – “You should have told me!” he roared.

“That’s a no then is it?”

Thor pushed him savagely. Loki shoved him back, angry that Thor was not reacting as he was supposed to. Thor punched him. Loki ducked and Thor’s fist got him in the shoulder. Loki danced around and hit him back. Within seconds they were a scrapping snarling ball of fury, fighting like cats in the alley. Thor was aware, even as he tried to wrestle Loki down, that he did not want this, did not want to hurt him; he wanted to touch him, to be reaching for him, wanted to be glad just to have him back, to hold him close and keep on holding him forever. But he was too angry and Loki, it seemed, did not care about hurting him. After that first punch, all Thor found himself doing was fending off a writhing whirling attack of Loki.

Loki scratched and hit and dragged at Thor. He knew, somewhere in his head, that he did not mean to, ever. But Thor had been _mean._ He had not been pleased to see him. He had not even told Loki that he had mourned him and so, as far as Loki could tell, he had not. Thor thought he had died and he had not cared and no amount of sensible thought would tell him otherwise. He had tested Thor and Thor had failed. It hurt so piercingly Loki could not stop trying to hurt him back, determined not to hear an attempt at explanation on Thor’s part. He knew Thor was shouting his name at him, but he refused to hear it. And yes, a large part of him enjoyed the fight, enjoyed lashing and ducking and now and then hurting and Thor, large and hard and furious pushing against him. He would not hear Thor speak but he let him wrestle him onto the alleyway floor.

“Well” Loki smirked – “Isn’t this familiar.”

Thor growled, lip twitching, not even able to express his disgust at Loki, still acting like this was the most fun he had ever had.

“You –” he snarled out, pushing Loki’s wrists down onto the ground behind his head; Loki squirmed, but not, Thor could tell, trying to get away – “You lied to me”.

“No – oo,”  Loki said slowly, as though Thor were being stupid, as usual – “I just didn’t tell you, that’s not the same thing.”

“You told me you were worried something would happen! You built me up to this – you let me think I could have stopped it! You did it all – on purpose!” Thor seethed, realising as he said it, the extent of Loki’s deception. Loki’s eyes sparkled wickedly –

“Well yes,” he admitted – “Are you telling me I didn’t do well?”

“I – you – how _could_ you?”

“Yes, you were broken up, I’m sure – that’s why you’re so pleased to see me back,” Loki spat – “I bet you were _glad_ to see me gone –”

“You would mock this? I _died_ without you!”

“Tsk. So melodramatic. Really Thor that’s my job.”

“I hate you Loki, I fucking hate you.”

“See that’s your problem – you always sing the same damn song – that’s why I’m a bigger star than you -” Loki might have gone on but Thor slapped him in the face;

“You’re a _dead_ star!” he snarled – “You’re nothing –I could –” Loki’s eyes widened for the first time in fear but before he could speak Thor was on him, teeth and tongue fighting a way in, lips sneering against his mouth in a kiss that hurt. Loki reached and struggled – not so much to push him off but at least to slap him back – Thor slammed his hands down again, pushing a knee between his legs to kick them apart, yanking at his belt. He twisted until he had both of Loki’s wrists pinned in one large hand and pushed his fingers into Loki’s mouth, never giving him time to speak. Loki glared at him, fire in his eyes, but he sucked on his fingers as he would have on his cock and Thor realised he had been this hard since he had first pushed Loki away. His mind was a mess, but his body knew what to do.

Thor bent over to kiss Loki again as he took his hands away, tearing at his clothes to touch him, to get inside him. He kissed Loki more to silence him than anything as his fingers shoved roughly into him, opening him up, Loki’s arms around his neck, holding him in place even as he pretended to struggle. He was wriggly, slippery and squirming; it just made Thor harder, more intent – he pulled his fingers out, replacing them with his cock, pushing in rough and slow and merciless. Loki screamed into his mouth; he swallowed it, wrapped his hand around Loki’s cock, hard and trapped between them, there were tears leaking from Loki’s eyes but he thrust and pushed needily into Thor’s hand anyway as Thor fucked him like he was still fighting him, violent in the face of uncertainty. He whispered to Loki again that he hated him, whispered it tenderly into his ear, and he did, he really did, however little difference it made.

As Thor whispered Loki kissed, kissed his face and arms and the hair that fell golden against his face, peppering the side of Thor’s face in little kisses so sweet that Thor was thrown; his mind was a swirling mess of confusion whilst the rest of him shivered in pleasure at the feel of Loki beneath him, around him, everywhere; this was how they _should_ be, he knew it, they were _right,_ why had Loki had to switch everything up? Why could _he_ not just have asked him? Why did he have to be such a dick? Why did Loki?

“Me too,” Loki whispered – “I love you too”.

Thor crushed Loki to him, arms around him, all of that slight little figure clutched to his chest as he came, crying out, inside him, Loki shuddering in his arms, spilling into his hand. He had never said it before, Thor realised, why say it now when he had not wanted to hear it? _Because,_ he almost heard Loki say it, as smugly as he would have if Thor had been man enough to ask – _you did not want to hear it._ He had to be careful, he realised as the disentangled, surprisingly gentle, he had to be so careful how he played this.

But as Loki got back to his feet, Thor could almost see him shake the gentleness off his face like it was glitter in his hair. He took off that part that had said _I love you_ like it was a coat he found uncomfortable and before Thor could take advantage of the moment he grinned – shakily but cockily –

“Feel better now?” and the smirk was back – “Prove something did you?”

“No.” Thor stared at him sadly, frowning – “No, nothing,” he looked away. Something in the angle of his body made butterflies of panic in Loki’s chest, they flew out as snapping words.

“That’s it? You’re just going to go?” His eyes stung. He hated it – “You’re going to walk away? Again? You’re just going to walk off on me?”

“I hadn’t been –” Thor heard himself say. This time his mind knew what it wanted, what it always wanted, but his body was betraying him and he was turning away, he wouldn’t look back this time, wouldn’t look at Loki, see the dampness on his face from the tears he wasn’t crying. If Loki was going to be like that he _would_ walk away.

“Fine!” Loki yelled, actually stamping his foot – “Fine! If that’s what you want! Go away, see if I care! I could have _anyone_ I don’t need you! I hope you _die_ wishing I’d never come back! You –” Loki’s tongue felt all twisted up and he knew that if Thor was going to walk away he had to stop him or do it too, just like he had the first night they were together.

Loki chose on impulse. He picked a direction and ran.

__x__

**Okay how much do we hate the Scheherezade thing I keep doing to you all? :-)**

**I’ve just realised, both sadly and finally that this fic is nearly finished – I got a maximum two/ three chapters to go! Luckily for us all, thanks to _Storyends_ I have a plan for the next one so you won’t miss me too long! :-)**


	15. Chapter 15

It would have been hard to say which of them was the more surprised when Loki barrelled into Thor head first, almost knocking him into the ground. If it was an attack it was a strange one, Loki clinging to Thor, arms wrapping tightly around his waist and taking the breath out of him. He clung to Thor so hard Thor could not have disentangled him even if he had been sure he wanted to. And he did not want to. The one thing he knew at this moment was how glad he was Loki was not letting him walk away, how relieved to have been charged like this. Certainly he had only been _walking_ away to the slowest definition of the word.

“Don’t go,” Loki said. Thor barely heard the words, snuffled into his back as they were, but he knew what they were all the same. It was not, Loki thought crossly, sadly, what he had meant to say or wanted to say, certainly if he had wanted to say it at all it would have been a command, not the sniffled little plea that actually came out of him.

Thor turned around, dragging Loki off of his back gently as he did – gently because as long as they were still touching Loki allowed it. He permitted Thor to drag him round and hold him to his chest, falling limply where he was placed like a worn out child.

“Loki –” Thor sighed, shaking his head – it was all he could say, it took all of his energy to go from being angry to – whatever he was now, and then –

“Loki, don’t cry”. Thor felt his heart falter and melt. It was hopeless. He could not keep his own integrity, let alone any anger or righteousness, for five seconds in the face of Loki crying on him.

“I’m not crying!” Loki sniffed angrily, wiping his nose on the front of Thor’s shirt.

“You are too.”

“Thor, don’t be so –” Loki looked up at him, face streaked with black and taking a big sniff – “Childish”.

“I am _not_ the one sulking and crying.”

“I can cry if I want to,” Loki huffed, pouting.

“Loki – Loki – my shirt!”

Loki made a little sound that was almost a chuckle and blew his nose on Thor’s shirt again to prove his point.

“Can we – can we go home now?” Thor looked down at Loki’s face, eyes shining with tears. When he cried it was as though the act washed all the other colour from Loki’s eyes and only a shining, clear silver remained. There was so much he needed to say to him, so much he needed to ask. Ten minutes ago he had been thinking on giving up on Loki for good, half an hour before _that_ he had thought he was dead. He remembered what both of those feelings had been like and nodded gently;

“Yes Loki, we can go home.”

-x-

Back in the apartment, Loki whistled softly;

“You _need_ me. Look at this mess.”

“Loki –” Thor remembered – as briefly as he could – throwing half the contents of the place from side to side over and over again, drunk and raging and wretched with Loki dead – “You were dead,” he shrugged, looking at him. The hurt in his eyes would have been enough to make anyone else apologise on the spot and feel bad that an apology was all they could offer. Loki’s lip twitched and he looked away and would not meet Thor’s eye again.

“I’ll make tea,” Thor said and set about the motions in the kitchen.

“English,” Loki rolled his eyes – “There is not a crisis that could hit you that you would not face with a nice cup of tea, is there?

“Drink your fucking tea, Loki.”

Loki slouched into a kitchen chair and took the tea;

“It’s hot,” he whined – “You’re still angry at me,” he made his lip quiver, on purpose this time. Thor recognised the purpose and would not play.

“Loki – I – I – you –” it occurred to him, looking at the narrow slant to Loki’s eyes, that any hint of blame, even in his tone would just make Loki retreat into himself and his vast selfishness all over again and so – “I thought you were dead,” he said, as calmly as he could – You let me think you were dead. Can I just ask why?”

“Why.” Loki echoed. He leaned back, swirled his fingers around the handle of his tea cup, leaned the chair so far back he nearly fell – “I’m a _star,_ ” he shrugged – “I wanted to go out with a bang. Change the world. Come back better. It was a story and I – I didn’t want to just be the trickster anymore.” There was something else, Thor could see it, more than one something. Loki almost carried on but then closed his mouth too suddenly.

“So did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Change the world?”

“Try to change the world –” Loki gave a half shrug this time – “Only end up changing ourselves.”

“Is that so bad?”

“You take a look at the world?” Loki sighed.

“No,” Thor said. He was tired, too tired to be anything but honest – “No Loki, I just looked at the space you left behind in it. I – I don’t care so much about the world – I only care –”

“Thor shut up. –” Loki’s eyes were brimming again – “Please, _please_ shut up – I – I wanted to see – if anyone would miss me. If _you_ would miss me. I wanted to see if you could manage without me.”

“Did you want me to?”

“No.” Loki looked at Thor fiercely, it was the first really honest thing he had said so far – “No I didn’t. I didn’t want you to be happy without me. I didn’t want you to _carry on._ I should have, shouldn’t I? Would that make me a good person? I should have just wanted you to be happy. I didn’t. I wanted you to miss me so hard that I would sweep back in just before it killed you. I thought you’d be so happy to see me you wouldn’t be angry, just pleased. But it wasn’t like that.” Lokis eyes went hard again.

“Loki _I came back to life_ when I saw you – but of course I was angry. You don’t _do_ that to someone.”

“Don’t you?” Loki shrugged – “What the hell do I know? I never loved anyone before.”

There it was, naked in Loki’s face, he could feel it there himself like claw marks across his cheeks. He stared down at the tea growing cold in his hands.

“ _Yes_ Thor,” he almost snapped it, as though Thor had argued with him – “You think I didn’t notice? Didn’t feel how good we were? How much we worked together? Even our music was working. It was beautiful, like we were creating something magic, new. It seemed like – we could really – be a thing, be – I don’t know – happy – and I – I –” two tears slipped silently down his face and he raised his palms in surrender, closed his eyes, knowing that he had to say it before Thor said it for him and made him shout at him for it – “I was scared,” Loki breathed and stared at Thor in some kind of challenge.

Thor clasped his hands across the table;

“So was I,” he admitted – “And I still am.”

“Still – you mean we could still – no I – I fucked it up didn’t I? People don’t do that, you said. You care about that sort of thing.”

 “Yes, I care,” Thor nodded – “But not as much as I care about you. I hate you, I wasn’t lying when I said that, but hell Loki it doesn’t matter – because I love you more than life.”

Loki looked at him then, properly, finally, hands finally still in Thor’s, not fighting as they had been, wriggling like trapped butterflies in Thor’s great hands.

“You do?”

“I always did.”

“I –” Loki’s lip quivered all on its own.

“Shall we take this to the sofa?”

Loki nodded, pulling his hands away from Thor’s only with reluctance. He drained his tea and made a face –

“Ugh, I hate cold tea.”

There was still so much to ask, but for several minutes they lay on the sofa, Loki burrowing in to Thor, listening to his heart beat as Thor stroked his hair and back. It could wait, it could all wait.

“Thor?” Loki mumbled eventually.

“Yes Loki?

“I hate you too.”

“I know.”

“But you know that thing – that thing that you said - why it didn’t matter?”

“Yes Loki?” Loki’s cheeks were flushed so hot Thor could feel it through his damp, slightly disgusting shirt.

“I do that thing too!”

Thor smiled.

“I know Loki.”

“I always did _too!”_

“I know that too.”

He felt Loki sigh and almost relax; felt him almost smile.

__x__

**Heee, this chapter was fun to write – I think I have at least two left, certainly they still have a lot to resolve! :-)**

 


	16. Chapter 16

  **14.**

 

For the rest of that evening, Thor was careful not to push it. He knew how precarious his position was; talking to Loki right now was like a careful trapeze act; one false move and he would lose his grip and Loki would fall into a place from which, this time, there would be no coming back. Thor tried hard to forget, even in his mind, that he was the injured party, but was so certain that he was (self -righteously certain, he knew Loki would have said) that all he really succeeded in doing was behaving as though he did not feel the injury. He had finally realized that to do otherwise awoke Loki to feelings of actual guilt; guilt that he took angrily and hammered into weapons – anger, bitterness, outrage and injured innocence – anything, in short, that he could use to attack Thor rather than letting those wicked knives curve in on his own fledgling heart.

And so that night they spoke nonsense and ordered pizza. When they argued over toppings it began to feel like all could really come out well in the end. In the end, they got individual pizzas, even though Thor said Loki would never manage sixteen inches on his own and Loki, just to prove him wrong, made himself almost sick eating every bit of it. Later on Loki magnanimously offered to help him clean up the “fetid pigsty” of a room, and Thor, just as graciously, shrugged it off and said he’d do it later.

It was a strange, dream-like night after that, trying to make light of where they were and all that had happened whilst still feeling the weight hang heavy and fresh in the air of all that they still needed to talk about.

The knowledge and awareness of the idea of moving on hung on one side of a gulf with their unfinished conversation crouching on the other side with its teeth bared.

When Loki announced, after what he considered to have been an excessively generous level of time, that he could not cope with the filth of the living room any longer, they transferred to the bedroom. The hundred unsayable complications that this threw up led Thor to light a dozen candles around the room before coming to lie with Loki on top of the sheets. They lay face to face, watching each other in the mischievous light that put sparks in Loki’s eyes and lent shadows to Thor’s face. They were Loki’s candles, the wax trickling from cupboards and shelves, forming pools on the carpet at times that had long ago convinced Thor they would never get their deposit back. Unsurprisingly, Loki had never even begun to imagine how or why to care.

Loki’s fingers moved lightly on Thor’s face as though re-exploring him blind, Thor’s hand light on Loki’s arm. They were both aware that they were looking face on to all of the answers to all of those still wriggling questions, but could not quite make the final push towards the inevitable conclusion.

“Everything stopped,” Thor finally said, aloud and apropos of nothing and everything, his words trickling straight into the half dark from the workings of his unsteady heart “You were dead and now – it feels like _I’ve_ come back to life and now everything, people places, names, it’s all –”

“Speeding up,” Loki nodded – “Now we just have to cope with this evolutionary paranoia.” It sounded, as so often, like he was quoting something.

“I just –” Thor frowned – “It’s like everything’s going in fast forward to make up for the pause when you were gone and I can’t keep up.”

“Fairly sure that’s what I said.”

“Maybe. But the way I said it made sense.”

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” Loki blurted suddenly – “I mean, maybe I did. I wanted you to miss me but I – I suppose I didn’t think you would.”

“You didn’t –” Thor shook his head in disbelief – “Loki I don’t even know if that’s profoundly selfish or a complete lack of self-worth.”

“I can’t have both?”

“Either way Loki, you should have known better.”

“I can’t – I mean –” Loki rolled onto his back, exhaling aggressively at the shadows on the ceiling – “Thor – you’re saying I should have _faith in myself?”_ He inclined his head to smile at Thor tightly, a flicker in his eyes and to that smile that almost broke Thor’s heart;

“You really are the biggest, sweetest idiot, you know that?”

“Loki, I love you,” Thor all but shrugged.

“And that’s easy for you isn’t it?” Loki did not sound angry, merely interested, intrigued even.

“It is what it is.”

“It is what it is,” Loki echoed – “But _I’m_ not. I’m never what I am. I thought I could reinvent myself and then I might know. If I died – I’d be able to see the space I left in the world.”

“And did you? What’s it like – being dead?”

“I saw the whole world go on without me. I saw my fans and the media, the whole music industry just churning on without me. And I saw _you_ – barely going on. Being dead – you see more really – it was like I could see the whole of creation spilling out of the stars, the whole stinking world.”

“And?”

“And it was just _terrible_ without me. I had to come back.”

Thor smiled, chuckled.

“Seriously though –” Loki looked at him, still smiling, but with a narrowing of fear in his eyes – “It was you. You were why I left and then – you were why I came back. I was so afraid of _settling down,_ of what we were becoming and then –”  Loki sighed – “Then I could not live without it. I couldn’t even be _dead_ happily without it.”

“Loki.” Thor frowned, and then he was kissing him, and Loki was soft and yielding and sweet as a child, kissing him with an honesty he had never felt before and with the pleasant lack of necessity to move on from there to sex.

“Where were you though?” Thor asked when they broke off.

“Dead,” Loki shrugged – “Alone in my own head for a while. It was – awe inspiring and – strange. I suppose I took the time to explore myself, realise how little I knew of what there was, you know, in here.”

“No I mean – where actually were you?”

“Oh, I was staying with the band”

“The band?”

“Yes.”

“ _My_ band?”

“No you great pillock, _my_ band. Like I would have trusted Sif not to tell you.”

“Oh. Good. I’m so glad I only got betrayed by half the people I know.”

“And Fandral. I told Fandral.”

Thor sighed.

“Half plus one moron.”

“I _had_ to Thor,” Loki explained patiently as though to a child – “It’s not easy to fake a death and you just can’t do it alone. I mean you all _saw_ the shooter in the stands didn’t you?”

“Yes – yes what _was_ that?”

“Staging,” Loki grinned proudly – “Actually I really was pleased with that. Your eyes were drawn there weren’t they? That was the lighting. I made sure _everyone’s_ eyes were drawn there. Just so they only just registered at the time and _totally_ registered afterwards. Good wasn’t it?”

“No Loki, I can’t say it was good.”

“Hmm, well I suppose you wouldn’t. So of course I needed help for that. _I_ had the fake blood to work in my costume and then I had to train Slepnir for weeks on delivering the _Loki Laufeyson is dead_ line – you have no idea how tough that was. The lengths I went to.”

“Yes,” Thor glared at Loki, but it was becoming half hearted – “That was rather the problem.”

“Does it still matter?” Loki’s voice was careless but his eyes as he watched Thor carefully for an answer were wide and scared as though his whole future depended on Thor’s answer. It did.

“No Loki,” Thor said, and just as he said it he knew it to be true – “No, it doesn’t matter.”

__x__

**One more chapter! :-)**


	17. Chapter 17

**17.**  

 

 

Just because you see two naked people in bed together, Fandral reminded himself, doesn’t necessarily _prove_ sex was involved. The case it made to the contrary was so strong, however, that he had no sooner walked into Thor’s room that morning than he groaned a very loud “Fucking hell”, facepalmed heavily and backtracked out of there at a rapid rate.

Fandral, as he often said, would have hated his life if it did not make him such an appalling amount of money. He was not quite sure what was worse; having to spend the last week literally dragging Thor out of bed and into the world, keeping the secret of Loki’s abysmal showmanship from him or what he had seen just now, walking in, as far as he had know, to drag Thor once more from his pit only to find a _very_ naked Loki asleep almost entirely on Thor’s chest like a cat and just as almost entirely uncovered by the un-obliging bedsheets.

Luckily his expectorations had been loud enough that he only had to sit gently groaning into a cup of coffee in Thor’s kitchen for some twenty minutes before his two shining stars ambled in, Thor on the cusp of happy again and Loki, curiously, somewhat sheepish.

“Thanks for keeping me so well informed there, Loki.”

“You’re welcome!” Loki smiled far too brightly, but the grin stayed on his face, as though pissing off Fandral was all that was needed to make his resurrection complete.

“Well you have been better informed than I at least, it seems.” Thor eyeballed his manager accusingly, at least for a little while, before setting to making fresh coffee.

“That’s yesterday’s, you realise,” he gestured the cup in Fandral’s hand. Fandral shrugged.

“And Loki probably spat in it,” Thor added, casually. Fandral looked up at Loki wearily.

“Probably,” Loki confirmed happily. It said a great deal about Fandral’s weariness that he carried on with the coffee anyway.

“I am _so_ glad you two are back and functioning. I cannot tell you the source of my delight,” he deadpanned, wondering if it was still too early to add whiskey to the doubtless defiled coffee.

“Pancakes?” Thor offered. Loki beamed; the complicit domestic happiness was making Fandral a little nauseous –

“Worst thing about being dead,” Loki sat down at the table across from Fandral, fresh coffee in hand – “Being dead without your pancakes.”

“You _did_ once say you couldn’t live without them.”

“Please stop,” Fandral sighed – “I am going to add vomit to this coffee.”

Loki wrinkled up his delicate nose in disgust.

“Thoooor, when are you going to get that new manager?”

“Fandral?” Thor raised an eyebrow – “You wanna work for Loki instead? After that stab in the back and everything.”

“Now Thor – he _told_ me to - and seriously you should _see_ how much money we made in the past week, Loki being dead has done more for album sales than a hundred years of life might have – no offence.”

“None taken,” Loki shrugged – “Oh wait, I’m lying.”

“Thor, don’t make me work for him.”

“I could put you out on the streets.”

“Thorrrrr!”

They had gone through so many variances of this same argument over the years that Fandral barely paused for breath before heading straight from banter into business –

“So boys, what’s the plan?”

For the first time the unified front wavered as Thor and Loki looked at each other uneasily. They had avoided having the _what happens next_ plan so very intently that it was a shock to suddenly have to come up with one for a third party. They had not even, as Fandral had erroneously suspected, had any kind of sex the night before. This however, far from being a point of coldness between them, made Thor come as close to blushing as any of the things they had done in the past. He remembered; rustling down beneath the covers with Loki clasped to him, Loki all but clinging, soft grabby hands and contented little sighs. How they had fallen asleep so sweetly and with so little need for anything more than that. It left the most exquisite ache in Thor’s chest, letting him know, more than a whole night’s antics could have done, that Loki was back to stay for real this time.

“Uh,” he said.

“We’re going back to England,” Loki announced, as though they had been working this out all night and it was a solid decision between them. The fact that it was nothing of the sort did nothing to diminish the breath of relief Thor managed to keep quiet when he realised that if he had known what he had wanted it would have been this. He wondered, not for the first time, if Loki had some kind of magic power to have known this. Loki gave him just the quickest of glances before carrying on;

“Well, I’m dead here, after all. I can’t just come back to life where everyone can see. London. We should go back to London and just – lie low for a while. Let the news of my miracle creep slowly back across the sea, reach the new world after we leave it.”

“ _You –”_ Fandral frowned – “Want to _lie low?_ Do nothing? Am I hearing you right?”

“Yes,” a flash of irritation darted across Loki’s face – “I can’t – I can’t have _everything_ in my life be for public consumption.”

“Well, that’s a first.”

“Fandral shut up,” Thor stepped in, reading something on Loki’s face that he did not want to say to Fandral, if anyone – “You said yourself, sales have never been better since Loki was dead. Best to draw that out as long as we can, don’t you think and then – from England –”

“Start again.” Loki finished quietly. This time when he looked up he caught Thor’s eye almost shyly and Thor could not stop himself from smiling;

“Yes –” he stood behind Loki’s chair, and put a hand on his shoulder, echoing his words more for their sakes than for Fandral though it may have looked otherwise –

“Start again.”

__x__

“How did you know?” Thor turned to Loki when Fandral was gone – “That I wanted to go back to England?”

“I didn’t really.” Loki shrugged – “Did you?” Thor shrugged;

“Not until you said it I didn’t. Why do _you_ want to?”

“Unbelievable as it may sound, Thor –” Loki’s voice was accusing but his eyes were smiling – “I sometimes tell the truth a little. I meant what I said to Fandral – I can’t do _everything_ for the benefit of the ever watching world. Sometimes I think –” a curious flush crept into the pale cheeks – “I might like to live just for me for a while.”

“And?” Thor pressed gently, there was still something else. Loki all but closed his eyes trying to look away even more than he already was;

“And for you,” he admitted.

__x__

**Heyyy I lied! There’s still one more chapter! And yes I’ve been gone forever, y’all should trust me that I WILL finish this all the same! Family happened; it was awful!**

**By the way, for anyone who’s interested _enemiesbrotherslovers_ has done a beautiful illustration of my _Heroes_ Loki on tumblr here: **

**http://enemiesbrotherslovers.tumblr.com/post/127895278468/illustration-for-my-lovely-partner**

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	18. Chapter 18

 

 

Home. It had been about a hundred years, or so it seemed to Thor. He wished he could have known how it felt to Loki, wished he even knew what home meant to Loki. But as the plane descended into Gatwick and Thor watched the lights of London rising up out of the dark, the world becoming clearer by the second, Loki just snored into his shoulder.

“Hey.” Thor pushed him gently. It did nothing.

“Hey.” Thor physically lifted Loki’s head off his shoulder. Loki continued to sleep.

“Loki!” Thor lifted his head up and shook him all at once. He felt sick from the descent, his ears ringing and strange, all sounds distant as though underwater. It happened to him every time and Loki just slept through it all. He finally opened his eyes to peer blearily at Thor; when he rubbed his eyes his knuckles came up black from the liner he had forgotten he was wearing.

“Whaaaaat?” he groaned, annoyed.

“Loki we’re home. We’re there. Wake up!”

“I _have_ woken up –” Loki yawned – “Don’t like it.”

“You wanna go straight home?”

Loki smiled.

“Home,” he echoed – “I’ve never seen your house. Feels odd. Anyway no –” he shook his head – “You said there was somewhere you wanted to go first.”

“If you’re not too tired.”

“ _I’m_ not – you’re the one who didn’t sleep. Weirdo.”

“Just because I don’t drop off like a baby as soon as I get inside any form of transport –”

“It _rocks softly_ Thor,” Loki rolled his eyes – “How am I supposed to not sleep through that?”

“I’m not too tired,” Thor smiled – “C’mon – Fandral’s sorting luggage for us. We can just head off.”

“Aww” Loki moaned, pouting good naturedly for once – “But I’ll miss the carousel game!”

“Remind me again how old you are?”

“You are _never_ too old for the carousel game.”

But Loki followed Thor towards the taxi rank all the same.

“Where are we going?” he asked as they got in.

“Shhh,” Thor smiled, almost brotherly – “It’s a surprise”.

Loki accepted that, always it seemed, like he accepted nothing else, and turned to look idly out of the window at the lights in the rain as they drove past. London was black and deep, dancing colours out of the rain-shiny streets like fireworks out of the ground. As the taxi pulled up the rain was just stopping.

“I remember,” Loki said as they stood outside the door to the bar. He smiled a smile that was warm and wry and uncertain, almost wary just at the end.

It was all he said before Thor took his hand and led him through, across the quiet foyer and up the stairs that led to the roof garden. A couple of bartenders nodded them up, knowing who they were.

“You planned this,” Loki murmured.

“Booked the place out.”

“You throwing a party?”

“Not this time.”

Close your eyes, count the beats, make a wish. Pick up a memory that suddenly feels like yesterday. Come back the morning after, in the end it feels like you never went away.

They had stopped holding hands as they walked across the roof, though neither had really noticed. Loki felt something he was not sure he knew, a feeling like he supposed you might get in church. He had never felt it in a church. Here, with the chairs on the tables, the rain dripping between the slats, the faint smell of smoke and ash in the walls and the plants in their pots earthy in the rain. It was different. He felt it; a kind of reverence; the need to speak quietly.

“I remember,” he said again. Thor looked at him; Loki’s eyes were closed as though it was a prayer.

There was one table left in the corner with the chairs down and glasses out, beer bottles and bar snacks for the bread and wine. Thor threw his coat down on the bench; it was leather, it would survive. They both sat looking out, backs to the table, over the low wall and onto the night sky, the rooftops of London.

“I forget – ” Thor said, as he handed Loki a drink – “I forget where we were, we were on tour somewhere. You said to me - Thor, a man’s life is his image, you said you knew who you were because the papers and the fans were always telling you. You said an artist creates beautiful things but puts none of his real self into them –”

Loki choked on his drink, made a face, pulled the green gemstone he had almost swallowed out from between his teeth. He held it between finger and thumb and looked at Thor both quizzically and with admiration. Thor shrugged –

“You think you’re the only one who can pull off a piece of good timing? We work _together_ remember? You gave me that when we were here last. And now I need to know – which one did you mean? You can’t put nothing of yourself into what you create if you _are_ the thing you create. So which did you do?”

Loki turned the stone over in his fingers, it was shiny, filled with a million motes and tiny facets, a galaxy swimming inside.

“My real self,” he took a deep breath – “I didn’t know what I was talking about. It was all lines. Every word. They sounded good. Were they lies? I don’t know. No more than they were true. I could tell you the world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold it would be no less true but still just a line. You never read Oscar Wilde?”

“I know _The Happy Prince._ ”

“Of course you do –” Loki rolled his eyes – “I – I meant it all – and not at all. I _was_ my image yes, but I didn’t put myself into it. I put myself –” he held out the stone, as though knowing what he had done for the first time – “Into this. I don’t know if it was a lifetime of feelings or just that one night but I put myself into this and then –”

“You gave it to me.”

“Yes,” Loki said, slow but finally certain fingers fixing the stone back onto his jacket – “How did you know I was ready to take it back?”

“Because,” Thor said – “I always knew who you were.” He smiled, more craftily than Loki had been ready for, and took Loki’s chin in his fingers, tilting his face to his, traced the curve of lips with a finger and added – “ _The curves of your lips re-write history,”_ and he kissed Loki, knowing without seeing that Loki’s eyes were as shiny, damp and sparkling as the jewel on his lapel.

Later they stood at the wall, watching the stars come out as the clouds parted. Loki’s hands rested on the wall whilst his back relaxed into Thor’s chest. He fingered the green stone and smiled –

“You are –” he grinned – “Quite a performer. A sly one too.”

“I learned from the best,” Thor kissed the top of Loki’s head.

“You have me now,” Loki added.

“And you’re not a stone.”

“Close your eyes –” Loki said and in the blink before they looked at the sky it was possible a star fell down – “Make a wish.”

Make a wish and picture yourself on a stage, turning, glittering, tumbling down, turn yourself inside out. You start to soar, a tangle of stars in your hair. Of course you were pleasantly surprised. As it all drops away you stood in this place and you stand there now and if you stepped off into the night you would still be flying.

“I don’t think I need to,” Thor said, his arms winding tighter around this strange one he had finally caught, Loki’s smile pressed against the back of his hand.

Maybe it had been a shooting star; a spaceship or a trick of the light. They watched it pass and did not need to wish.

-x-

_We were caught inside a moment/ In a moment in between/ You left behind a scrap of red I left behind the green// Sometime before the morning/ Sometime after the start/ Sometime between the first and last/ You took away my heart// I didn’t want to feel/ But I know that this is true/ Sometime between the first and last/I fell in love with you._

_______X________

 

**This time we are really finished! Thank you all for following and hopefully I’ll see you all for my next long Thorki – it’s a good one, I’ve been brewing in my head for the last few weeks – _Pale Shadow_ coming soon!**

 


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